


in a language I don’t fully understand

by theappleppielifestyle



Series: the language we made up one night [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Get Together, M/M, Mutual Pining, Not Actually Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 08:08:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5121128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theappleppielifestyle/pseuds/theappleppielifestyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The road to getting together is not smooth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Dorian meets the Herald in the last few months of Haven, back before they knew it was the last few months.

There’s hardly enough time to get a first impression from him- he goes straight to the task of closing the rift as soon as Dorian finishes speaking, and Dorian can’t stop himself from glancing at the stream of green light that connects the Herald’s hand to the rift as he fights.

He remembers saying once that he felt he had seen all magic had to offer. Looking up at the rift crackling, spitting green light among the demons, Dorian wishes he could slap his past self upon the head, and not for the usual reasons.

The Herald fights well, Dorian notes as the man blocks a rage demon’s fiery claw just before it would have pierced Dorian’s back.

“Aim ice at it,” the Herald tells him as he turns.

At first Dorian startles- the firmness, perhaps, or the way he addressed Dorian as if he was one of the Herald’s trusted soldiers instead of an evil Tevinter magister. The opinion of Tevinter outside of the Imperium is just as Dorian was told his whole life, it seems.

But Dorian’s been fighting since he was old enough to hold a staff, and the adrenaline cuts any hesitation short. Ice zigzags up his staff, swells at the end rushes out past the Herald’s shield to encase the rage demon, who promptly stops attempting to kill them and falls to the ground instead.

The Herald is no less quick to act than Dorian, it seems- a short ‘good work’ to Dorian, and then he’s stabbing the rage demon through his iced-over eye socket. It wails as it dissolves, charring the carpet underneath where it lay.

“Bull, left,” the Herald barks, and across the room, a Qunari that’s even more massive than the Tal-Vashoth Dorian has seen on his travels strikes an incoming fear demon with enough force that his axe cuts clear through its head.

“Cover me while I close the rift, will you?”

Dorian stares, but only for a moment. “Of course.”

The Herald spares him a nod- and oddly enough, a smile- before stretching out his hand and opening his palm.

This time, Dorian doesn’t have time to glance up at the crackling line of energy, too busy keeping demons from getting to either of them, but he hears it when the rift shudders closed.

It’s like a candle being blown out: every demon in the room jerks and falls, dissolving into the floor. There’s several seconds when their weapons remain out, every eye scanning for more danger.

“You fought well.”

Dorian looks over to see the Herald is talking to him yet again, the odd man. Too trusting by far. Any other man, he’s sure, would have him shoved up against the wall demanding where Felix was, who sent the note, if this was an ambush planned by the rest of the evil Tevinter mages. It’s been Dorian’s experience of the South so far, and this experience is rocking it rather thoroughly.

“And you,” Dorian replies, because he had been raised to have something to say even when his brain was still catching up. “I’ll take it from the glowing hand that you’re the Herald, yes?”

“Herald, I don’t know about. But glowing hand, yes, that’s me.”

Then the Herald holds out the hand that isn’t glowing.

 _Too trusting by far,_ Dorian thinks for the second time in not enough minutes. Even the man’s face, his eyes- both dark and quite lovely, Dorian notices- are clear of suspicion. Dorian would fear him a fool if it wasn’t for the unmissable keenness to his gaze; fear him soft if it were not for the lack of hesitation as he fought expertly.

 _Is this a trick, then,_ Dorian thinks. _Something to lure me into the illusion of comfort before you-_

“What,” says an eleven woman to the Herald’s left, none too gently. Her haircut is blood-spattered and atrocious and sadly all the range in the South. A city elf, no doubt- when she says what it comes out like _wot_ , all heavy Ferelden vowels. “They don’t do handshakes in Tevinter, then?”

“Sera,” the Herald says, like a warning one might give to a sister.

“Ah,” Dorian says, realizing that he’s been staring like a confused moron at the Herald’s hand for far too long. He takes it, shakes like he’d been taught in etiquette classes. “My apologies. One too many blows to the head today, I’m afraid.”

He lets go, tells them: “I am Dorian Pavus, most recently of Minrathos. How do you do?”

“Quite worse, had you not been here,” the Herald says. He’s smiling, just a hint of it. “Why are you here, exactly? I was under the impression Felix would be here.”

“Mm. Yes. He should be here, but sadly he was otherwise detained. He should be joining us shortly.”

The Qunari shifts, those big shoulders rolling. “Boss.”

“In a hurry, Bull?” The Herald turns his whole face towards him instead of giving him a glance, like he’s done when anyone has spoken up. “We can wait for Felix.”

“And if he isn’t coming?”

“Dorian assures me he will,” the Herald says. He turns to Dorian again. “Right, Dorian?”

“He’s closer with every second, no doubt about it.”

The Qunari- Bull- huffs. His arms fold across his massive (and bare) chest. “Just saying, Boss, watch out. The pretty ones are always the worst.”

“Suspicious friends you have here,” Dorian says.

The Herald shrugs. “They’re protective of me for some reason.”

“Oh? It couldn’t be that you’re the only hope for Thedas, could it?”

“Do you believe that?”

Dorian’s hand twitches on his staff. Maker, where did Felix get to? “I do, actually.”

The Herald looks surprised. Dorian doesn’t blame him.

“I hope I don’t disappoint.”

“You’re doing very well so far,” Dorian admits, and the Herald laughs. It’s a bright, high thing, like the tinkling of church bells.

Felix finally shows up then, and the mood tenses. Dorian says his part, the Herald continues to not look at all suspicious of him or Felix.

As Dorian’s leaving with new plans set in motion, he overhears Felix say, “So, Leto. Regretting your journey here yet?”

 _Who in Thedas is Leto,_ Dorian thinks. It isn’t until the door is closed behind him that he realizes that he heard everyone’s name said in that room except the Herald’s. It suits him, Dorian decides.

 

 

-

 

 

The second time they meet is in Alexius’ meeting room, and then suddenly the future.

It takes all of Dorian’s determination not to start babbling. He does, though, make a few choice comments about the wonder of time travel, despite its obvious dangers.

To his surprise, Leto responds with, “Oh, I’m definitely looking into this when we get back.”

 _When_. Leto hadn’t even asked what would happen if they failed to find a way back to their time.

“Not to use it, of course,” Leto hurries to add when Dorian looks askance at him. “Just- to read about it. I’m sure there will be studies they’ll let me read. There isn’t much they haven’t let me read since this,” he says, and gestures towards the mark.

“What weren’t you able to read before,” Dorian asks.

Leto shrugs, steps over a particularly large crack in the cobblestones. He does it just as he always does- like he’s not sure he’s saying the correct thing; his shoulders tight. “I didn’t have the access to many texts. I read what I could, though.”

Dorian is itching to ask what kind of things he used to read, what things he can read now, if that was really concealed excitement Dorian had heard in Leto’s voice when he talked about reading studies. But there’s this voice that appears sometimes, sounding like Alexius or his father, whispering at him not to get too close. He doesn’t know why the voice sometimes sounds like Alexius, who has never told him anything like that.

So instead he takes a deep breath and says, “I must ask, are you ever afraid you’re going to banish your sword to the Fade by accident?”

Leto looks down at the hand holding his sword. There’s a greenish glow around the part of the hilt that Leto is holding, and he parts his fingers enough that Dorian sees the mark flash against the metal.

“Well, _now_ I am.”

“My apologies,” Dorian says, a smile curving his mouth without his consent. Trust him to feel affection for a man who he’s met twice, with whom he’s trudging through a broken future-castle in search of something to get send them back in time. “Does it happen often?”

“What, vanishing things to the Fade by accident? Almost never. I think it happened to a pen, once, but that may have just been because I dropped it and then forgot about it.”

Dorian’s laugh is cut short when a group of guards swarm them, saying things like _Blood of the Elder One_ and other such nonsense.

When it’s over, they’re both panting, and Dorian has a gash in his side that is deeper than he’d prefer a gash in his side to be.

“Have you ever heard of the Elder One,” Leto asks.

Dorian shakes his head. “No. Never.”

“Damn,” Leto says. He pushes off from where he had been leaning against the wall. He hasn’t said anything, but Dorian is sure he saw one of the guards give him a bad cut as well.

Leto winces his way through saying, “Remind me to look it up when we get back, will you?”

“I will,” Dorian says, instead of _what makes you think I’ll be around when we get back any longer than it takes to heal my stomach wound?_

 

 

-

 

 

 

They end up getting the question to ‘who is the Elder one’ answered more quickly than either of them expected, though not very clearly. In their defence, it wasn’t high on their priority list, what with everything in the castle attempting to kill them at once.

About halfway through the ordeal, Dorian finds himself vowing never to let this future come to pass. Everything is wrong, here- Leto’s friends, Bull and Sera, are lyrium-tinged ghosts of themselves, blinking red out of their eyes on every second step.

When they found them, Leto’s jaw clenched. He hasn’t stopped clenching it by the time they’ve defeated Alexius and Dorian’s trying to concentrate on the amulet.

“I will stop this from happening,” Leto promises them, along with a woman Dorian met briefly in the War Room when he was proposing his plan. He can’t tell if she believes him or not- her face is a hard, angry mask.

Bull’s and Sera’s are more of the same, though there’s more range in them- Sera’s ticks with sadness when Leto says this, and Bull lets a smile flicker into life.

“Hope Past-Me’s right there with you when you do, Boss,” Bull tells him.

Sera’s fists are so tight that her knuckles strain white over the streaks of lyrium etched into her skin.

“Sera?”

“Shuddup,” she snarls. Then she lunges forwards and hugs him hard enough that Leto’s breath _oomph_ s out of his chest. She squeezes once, then takes two fast steps back. Her eyes are wet.

“Just- shuddup, okay, you stupid- damned hero,” she says, and the last bits are muttered. She lets out a great sniff. “Go back and don’t you dare be a frigging martyr this time around, you hear me?”

“I’ll try,” Leto says. Dorian believes him. He’s finding it hard not to believe every word that comes out of his mouth.

From the door, Leliana yells, “They’re coming.”

Bull gives a sharp nod; Sera nocks an arrow. For a second, Leto looks like he’s going to say something, but then his lips press into a white line.

As they charge past the doors, Dorian sends them a fervent wish: _die fast_.

The amulet flashes to life in his hand. “Leto!”

Leto is staring, stricken, half-trembling on the spot like he wants nothing more than to throw himself into the fray with his friends. When a demon throws Sera’s lifeless body onto the floor, his hand makes like it’s going for his sword.

Dorian grabs his wrist. “You move, and we all die!”

 _He must understand that it’s bigger than this,_ Dorian thinks, and spares one last glance at the floor where the demons haven’t reached yet- Felix’s body is crumpled on the carpet, eyes open and staring at nothing. He’s on his stomach, so Dorian can’t see his slashed throat.

A portal splutters into existence, small and growing larger.

Leto doesn’t wrench his wrist out of Dorian’s grip. His face is like Leliana’s: hard and angry. It doesn’t reach his eyes, though- despite his gritted teeth, his eyes stay wide, fearful and tearful.

A corpse’s arrow bursts through Leliana’s chest.

Leto jolts. Dorian’s hand tightens on his wrist.

The portal swallows the both of them as they aren’t looking.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

Alexius surrenders and Felix accepts his fate and Dorian tells neither of them what he saw.

No matter how much Felix asks- or, more accurately, gently probes. He’s one of the only people who’s ever been able to peel back Dorian’s layers with minimal effort, so he’s aware of how shaken Dorian is in the hours after.

It escalates into a whispered, rapid-fire argument in Tevene as they’re all getting ready to leave, the whole thing quiet and hissed.

 _“I’m fine_ ,” Dorian insists. It’s turned into a snarl with how many times he’s had to repeat it. _“Stop babying me.”_

_“Dorian, with the time I have left and you joining these people, this is probably one of the last times we’re going to see each other-“_

_“Don’t. Don’t you dare.”_

Felix’s eyes go sad. That was Felix for you, especially after contracting the Blight- instead of angry, he got sad and loud. “ _I thought you would have accepted it, of all people. Even with all your and Father’s help, I’m not going to make it very long. I was only thinking that we should say what we want to say when we still have time to say it to each other.”_

It makes Dorian’s eyes sting. He busies himself with packing, doesn’t look up at Felix as he says, _“You are aware of this invention called letter-writing, yes?”_

Felix sighs. His hand comes to rest on Dorian’s shoulder.

_“Goodbye, my closest and dearest friend. It was a pleasure.”_

_“We are in a room full of people,”_ Dorian snarls at him so he doesn’t start choking up, but he doesn’t shrug him off. Instead he puts a hand on top of Felix’s and squeezes, sure he looks as close to tears as he feels.

Felix, as always, understands. “ _See you_ ,” he says.

Dorian would very much like to believe he will, in fact, see Felix again, but he can’t quite bring himself to do it. He doesn’t watch Felix leave, but he wants to.

“That sounded awkward,” Sera pipes up after a blissfully quiet four seconds.

Bull nudges her with an oversized elbow. “Best to leave this one, I’d think.”

They both finish packing before him, and leave with promises of saving Leto leftovers if they don’t eat them all first.

While folding his socks, Dorian is in the middle of being thankful of the language barriers in the South when Leto clears his throat.

In perfect Tevene, he says: _“You should write to him about what happened, at least.”_

Dorian freezes, head snapping over to look at him in the time it takes to go over what was said in the argument, picking things out that could be taken as a weakness.

His throat clicks. “You speak Tevene?”

“ _Si_.” Yes.

“You speak _fluent_ Tevene.”

“I have been getting rusty these past few years with no one to converse in it with me, but yes.” Leto pauses. “Would you like to, sometimes? Talk with me in Tevene, that is? I’d find it a big help, I do miss talking Tevene with someone.”

Dorian flounders. “I-”

“I overheard Felix say you were joining us,” Leto says. “Sorry.”

He sounds it, too. Does this man ever lie?

“So you would let me?”

“Sorry,” Leto says again, but this time it means _huh_?

“Join the Inquisition,” Dorian elaborates.

“Oh,” Leto says. Then he smiles, the first smile Dorian’s seen out of him since getting back from the future. It’s a small, weary thing, but it’s there. “Of course I would. There’s no-one I’d rather be stranded in time with, future or present.”

When Dorian smiles, it’s just as tired. After this, he’s going to sleep the entire way back to wherever the Inquisition is based. “Lets’ not do that again, shall we?”

“Definitely not,” Leto agrees.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

Haven is- well, cold is as good a word as any. Even when the snow lets up, there’s always a coat of it on the ground. Dorian has to concentrate not to shiver, most of the time.

“You could put on a jacket,” Leto suggests once when he comes to talk to him. He does that a lot- come to talk to Dorian. But after doing so, he always goes over and talks to Solas, and Dorian’s seen him have regular conversations with every person in his inner circle, so it’s not like Dorian is a special case.

“I could,” Dorian says. “But then I’d be depriving everyone the privilege of gazing upon my arms.”

“Gazing upon your single bare shoulder, you mean.”

Dorian resists the urge to press said shoulder into Leto’s long-sleeved shirt just to leech some of the warmth from it. “I’ll have you know this is all the range in Tevinter.”

“Really? When I was there, it was abnormally large hats. Please tell me that isn’t a thing anymore.”

Dorian perks up. “You’ve travelled to Tevinter?”

“Oh, yes.” Leto’s face does this little twitchy thing. “How did you think I learned Tevene?”

“I assumed you learned from someone in the South who spoke it. How long did you stay in Tevinter?”

Leto swallows. His eyes shift away. “Several years.”

“You… did not have a good time, I take it,” Dorian says, and his mouth snaps closed. Oh, Maker. Had Leto been sold into slavery? Dorian had heard of the slavers bringing slaves from all corners of Thedas-

“Whatever you’re thinking, I can assure you that wasn’t it,” Leto says, looking surprised at whatever Dorian’s face came to look like when the thought occurred. “I just, I- it’s complicated. I don’t talk about it much. And I did enjoy myself, at times- Tevinter has its good parts as well as the bad.”

“You are the very first person in the entirety of the South that has said that,” Dorian says after the appropriate amount of shocked silence following Leto’s confession.

Leto shrugs. It’s stiffer than ever. “Every place has its good bits and bad bits. Sure, Tevinter’s bad parts drown out most of the good, but- that doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed.”

Dorian has momentarily forgotten about the cold. There have been times where Dorian had been convinced that the only way to fix Tevinter would be to tear it all down, burn the rubble and start over on its ashes.

“You think it can be fixed?”

“I think there’s always a chance for something broken to be fixed,” Leto says.

It’s their first talk about Tevinter. It isn’t the last.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

Over the next two months, Dorian learns several things about the Herald:

Firstly, he’s not only fluent in Common and Tevene, but also Nevarran, Orlesian, Qunlat, Elven, and something called Sign Language which Dorian thinks is a hoax until he sees Leto communicating with a young deaf boy in the stables with it.

Leto also has a tendency to ask people if they’d feel more comfortable talking in their mother tongue, and if the answer is yes, he speaks it with them.

“They’re doing me a favour, really,” he tells Dorian once as they’re watching the recruits train. “I’d hate to just- forget half a language because I never speak it.”

“Why do you even know all of this,” Cassandra asks. In Common, thankfully. As of late, she and the Herald have taken to conversing in Nevarran, Cassandra’s first language. “Surely you must have been dedicated to learn so many tongues.”

“Well, Common was the one I grew up with,” Leto says. “Tevene was self-defence, I thought if I was staying there for an extended period of time I might as well know what people are trying to sell me in the marketplace. And after that- well, I got hooked on it. There are so many versions of the world out there- words in one language that don’t have meanings in another, different cultures with different ways of seeing things, a hundred million ways of saying or doing the very same thing-”

He stumbles to a stop, dropping his hands. Dorian’s a little disappointed. Leto, as it turns out, talks mainly with his hands.

“Sorry,” he says, with an apologetic grin. “I don’t mean to prattle on.”

“You found it intriguing,” Cassandra says.

Leto nods. “And I’m very good at it, apparently. Learning new languages. I catch on very quickly.”

It’s not the only thing their Herald catches on quick to.

In the first week Dorian was at Haven, he got a knock on his door and opened it to find Leto holding several very heavy tomes.

“You said you were interested in studying it further,” Leto had said. Then, at the blank look he received: “Oh! Time travel.”

“Ah,” Dorian had said.

With that, Leto had stepped past him into his room, dropped the tomes on Dorian’s too-small desk, turned to Dorian and started talking very quickly and animatedly about what he had already read. Dorian had been drawn in before he could consider the oddness of it all.

It had started a routine: every time either of them found anything interesting, they would alert the other. Nine times out of ten, it would end up with both of them talking so loudly and rapidly about the subject that they got politely kicked out of any public place they were sitting in.

It’s lovely, if Dorian’s honest. He hasn’t had a research partner since Alexius, and they’d never had this much fun discussing theories.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

When the Templars come, Leto drops the ‘three to a party’ rule and drags everyone along who can fight, which means Dorian is working in a team bigger than anything he’s used to.

It makes it far easier to aim the trebuchet with nearly a dozen than it would with three- their group circles whoever’s cranking it up and takes down any Templar or demon that gets close.

Vivienne raises her hand and barbs of lightning hook around every demon within eight feet, and Dorian watches with a faint _I must ask her how she does that_ ringing in the back of his head as he aims a fireball at the nearest Templar trying to stab him.

Everyone around him is giving it all they have, and Dorian spares a second to think _Maker, I could get used to this_ : sparks glint off of Blackwall’s shield as he blocks a blow; Leliana uses a dagger when she runs out of arrows; Sera does a running jump and shoots three Templars in less than three seconds; Bull leaps up onto a fury demon and buries his axe into its thick skin plates; Cullen slides his sword deep into a Templar’s gut; Varric aims bolt after bolt into the enemy’s heads and necks; Solas looks out over the battlefield as he casts a barrier on whomever he can; Cassandra glints with streaks of barrier blue as she charges towards a demon heading the Herald’s way.

Leto is in the thick of it, grunting with the force of how hard he has to yank the wheel to make it budge even an inch. As Dorian sets a barrier on him, he watches as Leto turns, thrusts his Fade-marked palm onto a Templar’s face and makes him dissolve into shattered cracks of green.

Once, Dorian feared him soft.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

They’re ten minutes out of Haven when Sera yells, “Wait, where’s Leto?”

The group stops. Or, Leto’s people do- the Inquisition’s soldiers mostly keep running, though a couple stay behind when they notice the sudden halt.

“He was right behind us,” Cassandra says, her eyes scanning behind them, like Leto was going to appear out of nowhere and tell them to keep running.

“Well, he’s not now,” Sera says, and is in mid-motion, turning back, when the avalanche hits.

They can do nothing but watch as it drowns Haven.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

It takes Bull’s massive arms clamped around Sera to stop her from running back in, and Dorian has to stop himself from doing the same once or twice. He doesn’t need Bull, though- just gritted teeth and the knowledge that no-one could survive an avalanche like that anyway.

“There was nothing we could have done,” Blackwall tells her.There’s blood crusting in his beard.

She swears at him. No-one’s surprised, least of all Blackwall. He even takes her hand when she finishes cussing at him and she falls into angry, quelled silence.

Dorian watches and pretends he isn’t. He didn’t expect those two to get along, but he didn’t expect a lot of things to happen.

When Cullen informs them they’re sending out a search party, Dorian tries not to imagine walking on snow that has Leto’s body three feet underneath it.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

The search party comes back with Cassandra carrying something, and Dorian doesn’t dare hope.

Bull gets there before he does, and Dorian watches Cassandra transfer something into Bull’s arms.

“Warm,” slurs a voice, and Dorian’s heart soars.

“Yeah, I’m very warm, thanks for noticing,” Bull says, relief clear in his voice. He grins when Leto grabs at his arm with fingers that won’t co-operate and rubs his cheek on his forearm.

“Blanket,” Leto mumbles. He rubs his cheek on Bull some more and then drags Bull’s arm so it covers his torso.

“Warming spell, now,” Cassandra snaps when she spots Dorian staring. “You, recruit- find Solas and Vivienne and tell them to come here immediately.”

The recruit stammers, “Y-yes ma’am,” and bolts, and Dorian holds his hands out over Leto’s torso.

There’s ice in Leto’s eyelashes. Dorian tries not to notice how his lips, usually so pale pink, are now just pale.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

Eventually Leto’s warm enough to cease with the heating spells, but they keep Dorian around just in case. Or, Dorian insists he needs to stay until Cassandra says it’s a good idea and for Dorian to kindly shut up now.

Dorian has run out of mana at this point, and he’s too exhausted to do anything but choke down a mana potion and slump at Leto’s bedside making sure the fire doesn’t go out.

Leto’s face is tilted towards it, and Dorian watches the light flicker against his face. Several times, he thinks he sees Leto stir.

When the fire starts to die, Dorian sighs and holds his hand out. He’s too tired to go and get his staff; he’ll have to rely on his rings. A small ember starts forming in front of his palm, then swells into a circle of fire-

Leto struggles upwards, scrabbles at the nearest weapon- a shard of glass from a broken bottle- and then lunges.

“Get away from me, _mage_ -”

He spits it like Dorian has heard many people spit it- like the word is poisonous, something only to be snarled or whispered in fear. Leto goes with snarling.

Dorian shoves his arm up just in time to stop the glass from cutting his face, and he’s opening his mouth to say something like _Leto, it’s me_ or _you’re welcome for saving your life_ or even just _what in Andraste’s name are you doing you lunatic_.

Thankfully, Leto seems to come to his senses as soon as the words leave his mouth. Knowing clears the fog from his eyes and suddenly he’s dropping the glass and sitting back in one shaky motion.

“Shit. Sorry,” he says, and Dorian can’t tell if he’s shivering from the cold or whatever that was. “I’m so sorry. I- that shouldn’t have happened. It almost never happens, only when- only with magefire. Or any fire and I’m tired, or stressed, it just-”

“It’s alright,” Dorian stops him. “Get under the bloody blanket, will you? We didn’t drag you out from all that snow to have you freeze to death on us now.”

Leto nods and does, and he’s huddling under it when he frowns. “Did- did I use Bull’s arm as a blanket? And call him Blanket a lot?”

“Oh, yes. You dubbed it his official nickname. You also made Cullen give you his coat, you know the one, the awful one with the scruff around the hood that he’s always wearing.”

“Maker.” Leto rests his face in his hands, blows hot air into them. He laughs. It’s not quite steady. “I gave it back, right? He must need it in this weather.”

“He got it back off you while you were unconscious,” Dorian says. “Felt guilty about it, too. He’ll probably apologize when he sees you next.”

Leto hums. He’s still looking into the dying fire, and Dorian wonders just what he sees. _Magefire_ , he had said. _Or any fire_ -

“Dorian.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t feel that way. About mages. I haven’t for a very long time.”

“I know,” Dorian says. “I feel like I would have noticed by now, if you thought otherwise.”

Still, even when Leto falls back asleep, as warm as they can make him, Dorian imagines the twist of Leto’s snarl.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

Later, when they’re packing up camp in preparation to move, Dorian notices that Leto’s hand is bandaged.

He’s about to ask when he remember the broken glass Leto had gripped last night to fend Dorian off.

“It’s fine,” Leto says when he sees Dorian looking.

“I can heal it if-”

“I know,” Leto says. “I’d rather you didn’t.”

“…Okay,” Dorian says, and makes a note to limit his use of magic around Leto from now on.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

Skyhold is just as cold as Haven, if not colder.

Despite this, Dorian finds he likes it.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

Another thing he discovers about Leto is how desperately he wants all his friends to be friends with each other.

Dorian finds this out the hard way. He’s getting ready to go to bed when a messenger shows up at his door.

She says, “You are needed at the tavern right away,” and Dorian looks at the book and bottle of wine that was going to occupy him until sleep came over him. He sighs.

“Inquisitor’s orders,” the messenger continues.

Dorian goes.

“What urgent business have you called me here for, exactly,” he asks when he sees the newly-dubbed Inquisitor, who is on his way to getting properly sloshed, like he ends up doing with Sera and Bull most nights.

Leto notices him about halfway through the sentence. He beckons Dorian over.

When Dorian sits down, Leto leans in very close, close enough that Dorian can feel the tight curls that hang prettily over his forehead.

“Drinking,” Leto says, and then leans back, satisfied.

“Dri-” Dorian pauses as the barmaid slaps a glass down in front of him. “Leto, I’m flattered, really. But I was going to drink in my room.”

“Alone,” Leto nods. He reaches over to pat Dorian on the back, very lightly. He leans in again. “You should drink with _us_.”

Dorian looks around. So far, the table’s empty apart from them. “And ‘us’ is…”

Leto turns away to burp. Then he turns back. “Sera n’ Bull are getting people.”

“What people?”

Leto gives him another very serious look. “My people.”

“Your people?”

“Yeeees.”

Dorian waits. When Leto doesn’t continue, he says, “Why are they getting your people, Leto?”

Leto whines, high and loud. “’Cause. Cause they’re my friends, yeah? And- and you guys aren’t friends, but you SHOULD be. You’d make good friends.”

“Just who are you talking about, you big lout,” Dorian says, not without affection. He takes a mouthful of the cup in front of him, because if he’s getting free drinks he might as well take them. “Oh, Maker. This is awful.”

“You get used to it,” Leto assures him. Then he spots Bull and Sera in the doorway and starts waving erratically. “Look, look, my people!”

Dorian turns, and sure enough: Blackwall, Cassandra, Josephine, Varric, Vivienne, Leliana and Cullen are all coming in with various expressions of confusion, amusement or boredom.

Leto counts, then says, “Where’s Solas?”

Sera climbs over the table to sit at Leto’s side. She’s been sitting closer to Leto ever since Haven. Leto swings an easy arm around her shoulder.

“Aw, he wouldn’t come.” Sera burps right in his face, then continues, “What a _shame_ ,” with such heavy sarcasm that Dorian has to smother a laugh.

“Oi,” Leto says. He flicks at her fringe, then frowns. “Oh, and where’s. Uh. Cole? Is that his name?”

“Yes,” Cole says from where he’s suddenly appeared in the middle of the table.

Sera shrieks and throws a tankard at him. It hits Blackwall in the face and spills ale all down his front.

Things go downhill from there. Or uphill, depending on how Dorian spins it. Either way, he wakes up the next morning with one of the worst hangovers he’s had, along with vague memories of playing cards and laughing a lot and talking too much. He’s lying on a bench in Sera’s bedroom with seven other people, all of them mercifully clothed.

Dorian squints down at them. Vivienne is nowhere to be seen- unsurprising, since she left twenty minutes into the night.

On the floor- nearly taking up the whole thing- is Bull, snoring so loud Dorian doesn’t know why he didn’t wake up sooner. Draped over his chest is Sera, snoring almost as loud as Bull. Next to her, on Bull’s stomach and some of his pants is Varric, his head far too close to Bull’s junk than Dorian is comfortable with.

Blackwall is slumped in the corner, a broken-off curtain draped over him as a blanket. Josephine is curled up next to him, her head pillowed on his lap, then Leliana sleeps with her head on Josephine’s thighs. Cullen is nowhere to be found, which has Dorian worried for reasons he can’t remember right now, but will surely come to him if he drinks enough water.

Leto is sleeping on the bench next to Dorian, their heads almost touching. Leto has dragged up Bull’s arm to use as a blanket across his torso, and Dorian watches it rise and fall with Leto’s breath as he tries to convince himself to get up and go to his room for a hangover cure. Said room, though, is a courtyard away, and the courtyard is filled with sunlight.

Stepping over everyone is a feat in itself- Dorian puzzles over how to do it for a few minutes before Leto whispers, “Go out the window.”

Dorian startles, then looks over at him.

“Window,” Leto repeats, then yawns. He nods at it. “It leads out to the roof, Sera and I go out there all the time.”

Dorian is aware. It often startles the people staying here, seeing the Inquisitor sitting with Sera, pointing at things or laughing or having too-loud conversations when they’re drunk or they see someone they want to talk to. Dorian can’t count the times he’s been walking past just to hear, “HELLO, DORIAN,” from the roof.

At this point, Dorian is quite sure Leto and Cassandra have had most of their conversations via yelling while Leto was on the roof and she on the ground below. Same with Cullen, though he’s less a fan of it and prefers to talk when he doesn’t have to crane his neck upwards.

Josephine disapproves, but she goes along with it anyway. She finds Leto charming, apparently enough to yell up at him about the results of their latest alliance.

Leto continues, “It’s a relatively short drop to the ground.”

“Thank you,” Dorian says, and sits up. “ _Shit_.”

“Please don’t vomit on me.”

“No promises,” Dorian says weakly. He squeezes his eyes shut, but it only makes his head spin more. “What did you do to those drinks?”

“They’re the standard drinks here.”

“What is wrong with the barkeepers?”

“It’s the best we can afford.”

Dorian puts his head in his hands as he waits for everything to stop _being_ so much. “Ughhhh _hhhhh_.”

“Yeah,” Leto agrees.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

Dorian never thought this would be his life.

He goes out on most of Leto’s missions with him, then when they get back they discuss magical theories and new inventions and history, anything that strikes their fancy.

In the evenings when they aren’t tramping through bogs or snow or deserts, Dorian either drinks wine in his room or drinks swill in the tavern. Leto’s people (because Dorian refuses to call them his people) come in often, and will sit next to Dorian, most of the time.

Dorian spends his Skyhold days doing all manner of things- exploring, for one, because Leto coaxed him into it once and now he’s hooked. Skyhold never seems to run out of places to discover.

Still, he always returns to his spot in the abysmally small library, the spot he’s carved out as his own. It’s his, and he hasn’t been able to have many things that are purely his since he left Tevinter.

He’s in his nook on the day Leto comes to him with a letter.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

He would have preferred to avoid that conversation for the rest of his life, but even more than avoiding it, he would have preferred to have that conversation kept private even more.

They leave him to talk with his father, and Dorian yells and cries a bit more and tidies himself up and leaves. He tells himself it doesn’t matter that it’s obvious from his blotchy face he’s been crying; the group already saw him do it earlier.

“I can shoot him in the dangle-bag if you want,” Sera offers immediately after Dorian walks out.

It earns her a laugh. Dorian takes pride in how it doesn’t shake. “Thank you, Sera, but that won’t be necessary.”

“You sure?” She falls into step beside him as the four of them make their way to their horses: Sera, Dorian and Bull, the people Leto takes out 3 times out of five, despite him denying having favourites. “’Cause I can shoot him somewhere else if you don’t like the idea of your dad’s bits all mangled.”

“First of all, thank you for that lovely image,” Dorian says. “And secondly, no thank you, again.”

Sera nods, but keeps looking like she wants to say something the entire way out of Redcliffe. Dorian is rather pleased she doesn’t.

“Tevinter is shitty about that, huh,” is what Bull has to offer about it. “Stupid thing to get your knickers all in a twist about. Good thing it’s different here in the South. No-one gives a shit who you sleep with.”

“Yes, thank you, Bull, for that enlightening message.”

Leto says nothing, but Dorian feels his eyes on Dorian’s back the whole ride to camp.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

“Did I ever tell you about my family?”

Dorian looks up from where he’s tending the fire. He doesn’t stop- Leto has mentioned time and time again, since Haven, that he doesn’t mind magefire as long as he’s expecting it and he’s two-thirds awake.

“You haven’t.”

Leto nods, stares into the fire. He usually does, if there’s one around. He switches to Tevene, like he sometimes does when he and Dorian are alone: “ _Come collect firewood with me and I’ll tell you about them.”_

Dorian gets up, brushes soot off his fingers.

It’s a few minutes into the woods when Leto starts talking. He tells Dorian about the bed-and-breakfast his parents used to own, about his teenage sister and how she used to tell him stories about age-old heroes while their parents were tending the business.

He tells Dorian about this one couple coming in, two men on their honeymoon, and about how Leto’s father had told them they could stay in the inn across town, but not here.

“ _I was only seven_ ,” Leto tells him. He doesn’t look at Dorian as he speaks, which is a first. Dorian can count on one hand how many times he’s seen Leto talk to someone and not look at them. “ _So I don’t remember it very well. But I do know they fought, and my sister even got involved. She and my mother started yelling at my father about it. It was the biggest fight they ever had.”_

There’s bark on Leto’s fingers, and Dorian can see the prick of a splinter in his thumb. Leto doesn’t take it out, and he doesn’t say anything more until they start heading back.

“I don’t like thinking about it,” Leto says in Common as the campsite comes back into view.

Since Leto’s switched back, Dorian does too. “It doesn’t sound like a particularly pleasant childhood memory.”

“No,” Leto agrees. He steps over a large, rotting log, careful not to drop his load of sticks. “But it’s mainly because I don’t like to think that my own father would have disapproved of me that much.”

Dorian opens his mouth to ask what he means by that, and then it clicks and his mouth stays very slightly open. “Ah,” he says finally.

Leto looks back at him and Dorian realizes he’s stopped walking. Not only that, he’s staring.

“Did… did you not know,” Leto asks. “I thought I was very open about it.”

Dorian shakes his head minutely. He doesn’t know, exactly, what he’s responding to.

“People are usually open about it in the South,” Leto says. He’s looking at him again, meeting his eyes. “My father was a rarity. It’s hard to find someone who cares about who you sleep with, here. And if you do find someone, then we will set them straight about it. We’ll back you, Dorian.”

Dorian is at a loss. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it happens with Leto the most. Always finding a way to get Dorian stumbling to a halt on his words.

He swallows several times before his mouth is wet enough to say, “Thank you.”

Leto says, “Always,” like he’s ordering what he’s having for breakfast. He even shrugs while doing it, like he didn’t just suckerpunch Dorian with some choking feeling that Dorian cannot and does not want to know about.

They make it back to the campsite and start stocking wood for the fire. Dorian keeps shooting looks at Leto, despite a lifetime of convincing himself not to look at men he might start to feel this for.

When he closes his eyes to go to sleep that night, Leto’s voice beats a tune on his eyelids.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

“You could have a partner, here.”

“Excuse me?”

“A partner. You could be with a man openly, now that you aren’t in Tevinter.”

“I- yes. I suppose I could.”

“Just in case you hadn’t considered it.”

“I hadn’t, actually.”

“Well, then, something to think about.”

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

They’ve all seen Leto’s scars.

It’s hard not to: they coat his entire back and some of his shoulders. When he shaves his head every several months, there’s a tiny burn scar dipping down his forehead, cutting off above his right eyebrow. The first time they were on a mission and had to bathe in a river, the full extent of his burns were revealed.

Dorian had stared- they were old, faded and white and spanning from the top of his pants to the margins of his shoulders. They were least a decade old, Dorian thought.

It isn’t for a while that Dorian learns just how old the scars truly are.

It happens in Emprise Du Lion, where nothing good has ever happened ever, in Dorian’s opinion. They’ve set up camp in a broken house and are attempting not to freeze to death, and in doing so Dorian is holding a tiny, floating ball of fire.

“Gimmie,” Sera says.

“You can’t just _hold_ a fireball,” Blackwall tells her.

“I can friggin’ try, can’t I,” Sera says, and reaches for it. “Better than freezing my tits off.”

Dorian leans back and Sera leans in, and Dorian drops it when Sera bats at his hands.

“Shit,” he says as Sera says, “Aw, shite.”

The fireball falls onto Leto’s elbow, then into the snow where it sizzles and goes out.

The effect is immediate: Leto bolts upright. Dorian expects him to scrabble for the closest thing he can use as a weapon, but instead he shoves himself up against a bit of shattered wall.

“Don’t- _don’t_ ,” he says, like it’s being forced out of him, more scared than Dorian’s ever heard him sound. “Pleasepleaseplease-”

“Hey!” Sera moves in front of him, but doesn’t touch him. They learned not to about six months back when Leto woke up from a nightmare and promptly broken Cassandra’s nose. She’d taken it in stride.

“Just us, Inky. C’mon, just us.”

Leto’s cheeks are wet, Dorian realizes, and not with snow. But there’s awareness coming into his eyes, even as he huddles against the wall.

“You with us,” Sera asks.

Leto breathes out deeply. “Fucking shitfuck.”

“Okay,” Sera says. “Good. Nug?”

Leto shakes his head when she holds it out to him, to which she says, “Alright, more for me,” and starts biting meat from the bone.

He’s silent as the night continues, and doesn’t say anything when Dorian shuffles to sit beside him. Body warmth, he reasons. The burn on Leto’s elbow is a tiny thing, he notes as he gets a better look.

“It’s never been like that before,” Dorian says. Then he winces. Damn. Probably not the best starting point.

“Not that you’ve seen,” Leto says, thankfully not noticing how Dorian blasted himself in the foot.

“So it’s- like that sometimes?”

“Yes.” Leto’s lips twitch. “It’s why I don’t bring Cole along much. I’m afraid he’ll start blurting out things I’d rather nobody know.”

“He does have a tendency to do that,” Dorian says.

“Mm.” Leto picks at a hangnail, doesn’t make a face when it comes off with blood on the tip. “Makes me guilty, though. I don’t want him to feel left out.”

“He’s a spirit, Leto.”

“He’s- kind of a person? Ish.” Leto scrunches his nose. “Anyway. If I want my secrets told, I want to be the one who tells them.”

“That sounds fair to me,” Dorian says. He isn’t expecting anything else, but Leto takes another breath and starts talking in Tevene.

_“Can I tell you? What my nightmares are about?”_

The fire flickers in front of them. It cracks and pops in the quiet.

 _“Of course_ ,” Dorian says.

Leto looks into the fire. It’s like he’s challenging it. “ _I watched a Tevinter mage burn my family alive. He left me so I could continue the family line. Said it was a thing he did. My parents owed him, money or a deal or something, it never mattered to me. I was eight_ ,” he says, quiet and rushed.

Dorian, shamefully, is stuck on _Tevinter mage_. Is that how Leto sees him sometimes, even if he tries to stop it?

“ _I remember them screaming_ ,” Leto continues. “ _It’s what I dream about. That, and the fire. The pain. He wanted to leave me something to remember him by. As if my family turned to ash wasn’t enough_.”

“Fuck,” Dorian says in Common, very softly.

“Fuck,” Leto agrees. He brings his blanket in closer, tugs it tight. “I’m always back there, Dorian. Not every night- just when I’m stressed. And sometimes I’m having a perfect time but I see the fire from a particular angle or, or in the right light and I’m just- back there. Again. Over and over.”

 _I know what that’s like_ , Dorian doesn’t say. The words stick in his throat.

“Thank you for listening, Dorian,” Leto says, then, in Tevene again: “ _I’m proud to have you as a friend.”_

The word he uses is _vallofi_ \- ‘highly treasured companion and confidant,’ if translated loosely. In Tevene, it’s used to describe a beloved brother in arms. In almost every text where it’s widely used, there are whispers about the brothers-in-arms being lovers.

Dorian presses his hands hard into his own ribs so he doesn’t do anything else with them, like reach out. “ _Alasiv_ ,” he tells him.

 _Alasiv_ \- 'always.'

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

There are many close calls.

In Tevinter, Dorian would have already bedded Leto and gone onto the next man if even one of these close calls had happened. But this is not Tevinter, and Leto is hardly one of the men who warmed Dorian’s bed for an hour or two.

Leto walks in on Dorian and other men enough that Dorian would think it wasn’t a coincidence, if Leto wasn’t so damnably good to his friends.

It would go like this: Dorian would be having a grand old time, on his knees or his back or straddling some lucky recruit or visiting dignitary, and suddenly the door would burst open, accompanied by Leto’s excited babbling about some research topic he just made a breakthrough in.

Said babbling would hastily cut itself off, replaced by a squeak or a, “SHIT, sorry,” or even one time a string of swear words in multiple languages, several of which Dorian didn’t recognize.

The first time it happened, Dorian had avoided Leto for a good two days before Leto had cornered him, told him he was sorry and that Dorian needn’t look like Leto was going to lock him up in the stocks. This was before Leto told him his preference for men, so Dorian was understandably dubious about it.

His gaze never lingers, Dorian reasons. If he was doing it on purpose, his gaze would surely stay longer than it takes to realize what he’s looking at.

Or, it did linger once, but Dorian thinks that was out of shock: it was the first time, when Leto had opened the door and his babble had cut off into one long breath as he took in the sight of Dorian in the middle of halting his motions of riding a man’s cock. Dorian hadn’t bothered getting his name.

Leto’s eyes had glazed over in a way that Dorian is intimately familiar with, but quickly the lust had been driven away by common sense and Leto had blurted an apology, averted his eyes and closed the door behind him.

If those were the only close calls, Dorian wouldn’t worry about it so much. But there were many more- drunken nights where one or both of them leaned in too close for too long, where their gaze strayed and stuck, where their hands wandered under the guise of helping each other up or getting their attention.

Their hands lingered often: a hand on the shoulder as a hello could stay there for half the conversation. A nudge could turn into their shoulders brushing for the whole night. Their head would be bent together as they read a book, hands would brush when they went to point out the same phrase or theory and then stay there, fingertip to fingertip.

They stick close together when they can, neither of them bringing it up so they could keep at it. Casual intimacy is not a thing Dorian was used to, nor something he knows how to react to. Not that there is much ‘casual’ about it in Dorian’s mind- every moment he spends touching Leto, there’s a not-so-quiet voice reminding him of that fact until said touching stops.

There’s another voice, also not-so-quiet but even less so, that occasionally pipes up to tell him that if he and Leto were together, they could hold hands above the table. They could kiss in places that weren’t behind closed doors or hidden on balconies.

They could love each other openly, and this is where even the little voice balks and quietens.

Dorian has never been in love. He has never planned to, even after he left Tevinter. He’s still not quite sure what being in love feels like, but there are times when Leto’s finger brushes his thumb while they’re discussing magical theories, or when their eyes connect over their friends heads during a card game, or when they check on each other after a fight-

Well. There are times when Dorian thinks he knows full well what it feels like, and thinks he might be in too deep to claw his way back out again.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

“Headcount,” Leto calls. He does this after every fight, no matter how serious.

“Still alive,” Vivienne says, brushing viscera from her robes. She’s always less bothered by gore than Dorian expects her to be.

“I’m here,” Solas says.

“I’m dead,” Dorian says, and Leto slaps his shoulder. “Ow. How dare you, sir.”

“Drink your damn potion,” Leto tells him, and maybe it’s the light glancing off his newly-shorn hair, or the glint of a scar that’s poking out of his hairline, or the warmth in his voice as he hands Dorian a vial, but Dorian’s breath catches and holds.

Leto’s smile ticks into a frown. “Dorian?”

“I’m fine,” Dorian manages. He takes the potion and downs it in one gulp, tucks the empty vial into his pocket. “I’m completely fine.”

 _Is there a potion for this,_ Dorian thinks as Leto continues to look at him worriedly. There’s a smudge of blood on his cheek and his hair is caked with drying mud and Dorian can’t stop thinking that Leto is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“Oookay,” Leto says, and turns to start looting the smugglers they just killed, which means they’re all probably going to have to fill their pockets soon since Leto seems incapable of having empty pockets himself to put things in.

Dorian sucks in breath after breath through his teeth. Maker. Maker and Andraste and all the Elven gods and whatever Qunari worship, he should really ask Bull later.

He looks over in time to see Vivienne and Solas trading a look, which is never good. “What,” he snaps, quiet enough that Leto doesn’t hear it, because there’s just about one thing they could be giving each other that look for. “ _What_ , what is it.”

“You are positively adorable, dear,” Vivienne says.

“That wouldn’t be the word I’d use,” Solas says.

From what Dorian’s heard from them in the two years he’s been in the Inquisition, it’s the closest they’ve come to agreeing on something.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

When they return to Skyhold, Dorian does what Leto’s been suggesting he should do for over a year.

He goes back to Bull’s room with him.

“You two obviously have a lust- thing,” Leto had said the first time he brought it up, one drink into too-drunk as Dorian sat there in borderline horror. “You look at each other all the time.”

“I look at a lot of people,” Dorian said. “Bull looks at- Maker, I don’t even want to know what Bull looks at.”

“Hey,” Bull said, from where he was _right there_.

“Shouldn’t we be having this conversation where Bull ISN’T,” Dorian said loudly.

Leto shrugged. Took another drink. “Y’ get titchy when you haven’t had sex in a while. ‘N Bull is great in bed, from what I’ve heard from everyone.”

“I don’t want to sleep with Bull,” Dorian hissed.

Bull muttered something into his drink that Dorian mercifully didn’t catch, and Leto snorted. “Most people wanna sleep w’ Bull, Dorian. _Josie_ wants to sleep with Bull. _I_ want to sleep with Bull.”

Hearing that, Bull inhaled his mouthful of beer and then coughed it over the table.

“Gross,” Leto said. He turned to Bull. “Oh, I’m not- I’m not going to have sex with you. I just entertain the idea sometimes ‘cause you’re great and- and attractive and good at sex. But I’m not gonna.”

“Thanks for keeping me updated, Boss,” Bull drawled, and then coughed. “Ugh. Some of it went up my nose.”

“Gross,” Leto said again. “Anyway. Dorian. Bull doesn’t see sex as a big deal, so if you want to do that, you should.”

“He is _right there_ ,” Dorian said.

Bull rolled his shoulders enough that the wall behind them creaked. “Dorian.”

“What.”

“If you ever want a roll around, I’d take you up on it.”

Dorian’s eye twitched.

“Just saying,” Bull continued, with this shit-eating grin that somehow made him even more attractive and also made Dorian want to sock him in the jaw.

Dorian had never taken him up on it until now.

At first, Bull’s surprised- as one would be, when your friend of two years pulls you into a bathroom and asks if he wants to fuck you. But he goes with it, though he objects when Dorian tells him he’s going to leave first and Bull can leave in five minutes.

“You know we aren’t in Tevinter, right?”

“ _Really_ , that must be why there’s a sudden lack of blood magic,” Dorian says. Slurs. There’s a possibility he may be drunk. “Are we doing this or not.”

Bull looks him up and down. “Yeah, okay.”

“You sound very enthused.”

Bull grins. “You want me to show you how enthused I can get? I can show you, but it could get kinda messy and this bathroom’s pretty cramped-”

“Just follow me back to your room in five minutes, you big lump.”

“Hey, you got it.”

Dorian leaves, attracting little to no attention, and goes to sit in Bull’s room. Before he can start getting undressed, Bull shows up.

“That,” Dorian declares, “was NOT five minutes.”

“What’cha going to do, Sparkler? Kick me out?”

“’S your room.”

“You’d still kick me out of it.”

“Probably,” Dorian says, and grabs the back of his neck, drags him down into a kiss.

Bull makes a noise, Dorian doesn’t know what it is but it’s pleased, so he keeps going.

He yelps when Bull picks him up, easy as anything. It’s- okay, it’s enough to make Dorian’s smallclothes get significantly tighter, and Bull is a very good kisser, as Dorian always suspected. Also he keeps just kissing Dorian instead of going straight for Dorian’s dick, which Dorian didn’t expect.

“You’re in a hurry,” Bull says when Dorian starts in on those awful striped things Bull calls trousers.

Dorian sighs. This point into the night with any of his other bedmates, Dorian had already been naked with a few fingers up his ass. “Just get on with it, will you?”

Bull pauses.

At first Dorian thinks he’s- hurt his feelings, or something, but then Bull is letting Dorian fall onto the bed and it’s on again.

Or, Dorian thinks it is. Instead of going for Dorian’s belt, Bull leans over him with an expression that definitely doesn’t predict sex in his future.

“Look-”

“Andraste’s ass, _what_ ,” Dorian snaps. “What, you’ve bedded half the tavern, am I suddenly not good enough?”

“Oh, you’re good enough, Pavus,” Bull says. He pins Dorian’s hands above his head, and Dorian’s mouth clicks shut. “Six months ago, if you’d asked me to fuck you? I’d do it in a heartbeat. I’d show you a good damn time, Dorian. Best time you’d ever had.”

Dorian is embarrassingly hard despite the disappointment starting to creep in. “But?”

“But,” Bull says. He leans back, lets go of Dorian’s hands. The disappointment is on Dorian in waves now. What could he have possibly done?

“I know you don’t want to hear this, but you’re way too hung up over the Boss,” Bull says.

Dorian’s blood goes cold.

“And if you wanted to fuck just ‘cause you wanted to fuck? Great. But I’m not going to fuck you just so you can forget about him for a night. Trust me, it never ends well, you’d regret it.”

“Am I that obvious,” Dorian asks. It comes out tiny and Dorian flinches upon hearing it.

Bull notices. Of course he does. But he pretends not to notice, and Dorian appreciates him all the more for it. “Not to everyone else, I think. Ben-Hassarath training, remember?”

Dorian lets his head fall back into the mattress. “Yes, yes, you bring it up every second word.” He starts to get up and walk out, but Bull stops him.

“Hey, I didn’t say you had to leave.”

Dorian stares at him. “What else would we do in your room?”

Bull shrugs. “Got a new chess-set. I’ve been playing Cullen; apparently I’m pretty good.”

Dorian stares some more. Bull meets his gaze evenly until Dorian comes to sit back on the bed. “Fine. Best out of three?”

“Done,” Bull says, and moves to get the chess-board from out from under his bed.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

Bull wins, 3 to 0.

Dorian is less than surprised. He probably saw Dorian’s cheek twitch and saw the outcome of the game from there.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Dorian’s half-asleep when there’s a knock on his door. He takes a second to glare at it before pushing himself out of bed to get it.

It’s Leto, back from a mission he didn’t take Dorian on for once. From the looks of it, he hasn’t bathed- bits of the Emerald Graves are still stuck on him.

“Are you okay,” Dorian asks, because it’s very late and Leto’s face isn’t telling of a good time.

Leto doesn’t answer. Instead he pushes into Dorian’s room, turns around to face him. “Would you do some fire magic for me?”

“Um.”

“I see you doing it sometimes when you think I’m not looking,” Leto says. “When you’re waiting, or bored- there’s that little fire dragon you conjure up, you make it weave between your fingers. Can I see it?”

“Of course,” Dorian says, and Leto’s face falls in relief.

“Thank you.”

 _Don’t thank me yet_ , Dorian thinks, and reaches for the Fade, brings back a tiny slip of fire. The details are always difficult- the small pits of its eyes, the ridges and wings and teeth. It’s always a little blurred, but with the ever-flickering fire it’s hard to notice.

Leto comes in close and watches. Dorian holds his hand up so it’s easier for him to see and keeps a cautious track of the fire reflecting in Leto’s irises.

A smile keeps flickering along with the fire- Leto tilts his head to follow the dragon as it climbs between Dorian’s fingers, nestles in his palm.

“It’s lovely,” Leto says, looking up into Dorian’s face as he says it before switching his attention back to the dragon.

“Thank you. It took many years to get it even this good.”

“It’s very good,” Leto tells him. His finger reaches out like he’s going to touch it, but then remembers at the last second that it’d burn. “It’s wonderful.”

Dorian makes the dragon open its tiny mouth in Leto’s direction and Leto lets out his bell-like laugh. “May I ask what brought this on?”

Leto watches the dragon flicker around Dorian’s hand for a while longer. Then he says, “I needed to remember that everything has a bit of good in it, even the things I once thought were all bad. Thank you for this, Dorian _. Kiffoss ina_.”

 _I cherish you_ , Dorian translates in his head. He does it often, translating Common to Tevene or likewise. “Leto?”

“Yes.”

It’s on the tip of his tongue, asking Leto to his bed, but Dorian has never been brave about this sort of thing. “What language do you think in,” he asks instead.

“Oh, it changes,” Leto says. His hand hovers over Dorian’s, inches away from the tiny flame of the dragon. “Common, mostly, though.”

“I thought as such.”

“Would you like us to switch to Tevene?”

“No, no. I’m fine like this.”

 _I’m fine like this_ , Dorian thinks, and tries not to notice how close Leto’s hand is to covering his. Perhaps if there wasn’t an open flame in Dorian’s palm, it might happen, but he doesn’t risk it.

Their heads bend close together as they watch the dragon for some time more.


	2. Chapter 2

They’re in the tavern when it happens.

Dorian is perhaps too drunk for this time in the evening, but he’s drunk enough that he doesn’t care. Sera’s arm is slung over his shoulders despite her having a conversation with Bull, and Dorian is leaning in so he can hear what Leto is saying next to him.

“I wish I had known you sooner,” Leto tells him. He is, also, quite drunk by this point. “I wish- we should have met in Tevinter, when I was there. I doubt I would have liked you very much at the start, but I feel we would have grown into each other.”

“But you did meet in Tevinter,” a voice says from startlingly close to both of them. They look up and Cole is sitting cross-legged on the table. “Hello.”

“Hi,” Leto says. He wriggles over to make room for him, and Cole sits obligingly.

Sera snorts, climbs over Bull to leave.

“Sera,” Leto sighs. He’s been trying to get Sera to make nice with Cole since he joined them over a year ago.

“Nope,” Sera tells him, flicking her fingers at him in a salute. “Not going to play with your little demon friend, Leto, I don’t care how much you both pout.”

Leto sighs again. “Sorry, we what, Cole?”

“Met,” Cole says. “In Tevinter.” The words are slow- he’s been making an effort to be clearer, lately. Dorian thinks it’s the newfound human side of him.

“Did we,” Leto asks. “Me and Dorian? Truly?”

At which point Cole drops any pretence of being clear and goes straight into cryptic: “Anger, pinching at the edges, nothing but the searing of it. It’s warmer than anywhere, the cobblestones are hot and lovely and loathesome.”

Leto says, “Ah.”

Cole continues like he hadn’t spoken. “People in odd clothes, nobles with dead-eyed slaves, the marketplace a din for several blocks. And a boy, older or just looking like it- there’s magic at his fingertips as he leans over a stall to hover a hand over a bird with a broken wing. Heat bristles that has nothing to do with the sun like every time magic appears, the anger pulsing like a heart, pushing blood around the body. Stuck in front of that stall as the magic swells, a soft green light that brightens and faded. What did he do to it? Put it out of its misery? Make it twist around in agony some more?”

Dorian remembers, faintly. As Cole speaks, images come to mind, long since stored away.

“But no- the bird’s chirps go from pained to joyful. It stands, cocks its head at the boy, who says some words that are odd and beautiful. They sound kind in his mouth. As the bird flies off, he notices he’s being watched.”

 _Oh,_ Dorian thinks faintly. Beside him, Leto’s eyes are distant as he watches Cole.

“You can stop now,” Leto tells him. “Thank you, Cole. That was- helpful.”

Cole gives him one of his rare smiles. “I helped? Oh, good!”

“You helped,” Leto says. His smile is just as small, but none less genuine. He places a hand on Cole’s arm and squeezes once.

Then Cole is gone, and Leto has his hand in thin air. Cole is known to do that- vanish when he thinks a conversation is finished. He’s learning to say things like ‘goodbye’ lately.

“Well,” Dorian says.

Leto makes an agreeing noise in the back of his throat. “I remember you.”

“And I you,” Dorian says.

It’s faint, but it’s there- a boy, fourteen at most, with a shock of dark hair and skin, his face marred with distrust and confusion.

 _Yes_ , Dorian had asked. _What is it?_

The boy had hunched his shoulders, snarled, _I don’t know what you’re saying_ in Common, which Dorian had then switched to.

_Are you a slave?_

_No. I am not. I am- visiting. What did you say to it just now?_

_What?_

_The bird._

_I told it to find its home_ , Dorian told him.

The boy’s face twitched. When the wind picked up, Dorian saw a flash of a burn scar on his forehead, years old. _Why did you help it._

_Well, I could hardly leave it to flap around helplessly when I had the power to fix it quite easily, now could I?_

_Yes, you could’ve. You could’ve left it._

The conversation made Dorian quite uncomfortable. A commoner, a foreign one no less, speaking to him as if he had permission?

The thought left him with a bad taste in his mouth, but he forced it down.

_Well. I didn’t._

_You didn’t_ , the boy agreed. His jaw shifted in its socket. _What language do people speak here?_

Good grief, Dorian thought. Then he said _: Tevene._

The boy clenched his fists. _It sounds wonderful._

That- wasn’t what Dorian expected. He even said it with gritted teeth, like he was loathe to let it escape the cavern of his mouth.

_It is, I suppose._

_How-_ the boy cut himself off. It looked like it took effort. He shook his head. _Nevermind_.

Then he left, and Dorian looked at his retreating back until he disappeared into the crowd. He didn’t think of the boy much again- why would he, an oddity on a dull, dusty day in the summertime?

“I had just arrived at the docks a few minutes previously,” Leto says, startling Dorian out of his memories.

His fingers make woodchips in the table. “Telling the bird to go home- it was the first Tevene I had ever heard. It was lovely.”

Dorian nods slowly. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“What were you going to ask?”

Leto frowns. Dorian continues: “You were going to ask me something before you left. You stopped yourself.”

“Ah,” Leto says. His shoulders hunch, and Dorian is caught with a flash of that sunny day when they were both boys, both strangers. “I think was going to ask you how such an evil place could have such a lovely language. I was convinced, at the time, that Tevinter was rotten the whole way through.”

“You’re not completely off-base,” Dorian sighs.

“You don’t truly think that.”

“I don’t,” Dorian admits. He takes a drink, because the next words are easier with new liquor burning its way down his throat: “I wish I did, sometimes. Then I wouldn’t miss it so much. I wouldn’t be so- so damned bent on seeing someone fix it.”

Leto rests his head on his arms, face titled towards Dorian. “Yes,” he says. “It’s that way, isn’t it.”

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

“I was there to kill the magister who murdered my family,” Leto tells him later that night.

Dorian’s fingers tighten on his wine bottle. They’re sitting on the floor in Dorian’s nook, books splayed out around them.

“You were very young.”

“And very stupid,” Leto says. “I was sent to my grandmother’s after my family died. When she passed, I ran to Tevinter.”

“How did that go, then.”

Leto laughs. It’s not as pained as Dorian expects. “It had its ups and downs. I learned on the first day that the magister had been killed a mere month ago, so that plan was out.”

“Yes?” _Who_ , Dorian wants to ask.

“By his own slave, no less.”

Dorian stiffens. He knows of but one magister in the last fifty years who has been killed by his slave. It had been the talk of Tevinter for many weeks.

“I heard about that,” Dorian says.

“Mm.” Leto holds his hand out for the wine bottle and Dorian passes it to him. He takes a drink, lips pressing where Dorian’s were minutes ago. “I was very pleased when Varric leant me ‘Tale of the Champion’ last year. He even gave me explicit details. Danarius didn’t die slow, sadly, but he did die painfully. That is enough for me.”

Dorian is silent as Leto takes another pull on the wine bottle. Then: “What did you do, afterwards?”

“Didn’t have enough coin to get back to Ferelden,” Leto starts. “I was hardly a genius at 14. So I stayed in Tevinter and tried not to get sold into slavery. Which was difficult, at times. But after a while I found a family willing to take me in, and I stayed with them for four years. They taught me many things, including Tevene.”

“They sound very charitable.”

“I paid my share,” Leto says. His mouth tugs upwards. “I miss them, sometimes.”

“Will you ever go back to visit them?”

“Oh. No, probably not.”

“May I ask-”

“Yes,” Leto cuts him off. He lies down on the carpet and Dorian angles himself so they can still meet each other’s eyes.

“They were- quite unconventional. None of them were related, anyhow. They were all simply good friends, family of bond if not by blood. They’re the ones who taught me that family doesn’t have to mean the people who raised you, or the people who are in your ancestral line. I am forever thankful to them for that.”

Dorian tries to picture it: Leto in the slums, Leto pulling odd jobs and stumbling over Tevene at such a young age. Leto being taken in by a rag-tag group of do-gooders. It suits him, to say the least.

“Tevinter had left its scars on all of us,” Leto says. “One of them used to be an Altus, like you. Then they were caught kissing another woman. There was more to the story, but- she was made Tranquil.”

It gets Dorian’s stomach churning. He heard of those cases, growing up- there were many things you could do that would end up in being made Tranquil. Dorian’s surprised an attempt wasn’t made- he was too important, he assumes. His family had too much influence.

“Another was an escaped slave. We hid him in the attic when anyone came over. Then there was a woman who grew up in the slums, she worked at the brothel a street over. And a boy, he was around six when I started living there, they found him on the streets starving about a year before I arrived. Maker, how old must he be now?”

Dorian lets him reminisce, lost in the memories. His arm itches underneath the covering. _Tevinter left its scars on all of us._

“ _Can I show you something_ ,” Dorian asks in Tevene.

“ _Yes_ ,” Leto asks, switching languages seamlessly.

Dorian reaches for his own arm, starts undoing the armour on the one with his shoulder bared. After a few seconds of fiddling, his whole arm is bare in the moonlight.

“ _I have seen your naked arm before, Dorian_.”

“ _You have. I am showing you these_ ,” Dorian says, and releases the illusion. It’s a cheap thing he got on his way out of Tevinter, tucked into the linings of the sleeve on that arm, a just-in-case thing for bathing around others or when he needs to take his armour off in front of people.

Leto doesn’t react past examining the scars. They’re numerous and small and grouped in places, spanning out all around his wrists and elbow. By the look on Leto’s face, he recognizes who gets these kind of scars.

“ _They were involuntary_ ,” Dorian tells him.

Leto blinks at his arm, then up at him. “ _From when your father tried to change you.”_

“ _Yes_.”

“ _Maker_ ,” Leto says. It ghosts across Dorian’s arm despite Leto’s mouth being nowhere close enough for Dorian to feel it.

“ _He never completed the ritual_ ,” Dorian says, the words spilling from a dark, hidden place he’s never before let come to light. “ _I managed to take down the people who were holding me down and incapacitated my father as I left.”_

_“Good.”_

_“Quite_.” Dorian laughs and it’s more than a little tearful. “ _He, uh. I was kept in the house for months beforehand. I was not permitted to leave. Whenever I got too boisterous about trying, the guards would knock me out with magic. My parents ordered it. My mother, at least, seemed conflicted about it_.”

Leto lays a hand on his arm, the scarred one, and Dorian very determinedly doesn’t flinch. Leto’s touch is always welcome, even when Dorian thinks he might shatter at the slightest graze of skin on skin.

“ _You deserved better,_ ” Leto says. His thumb strokes down one of the particularly bad scars. “ _Vishinti tass verdana_.”

 _Vishinti tass verdana_ \- ‘one whom I love beyond any boundaries.’ It steals all the air from Dorian’s throat, makes his lungs falter in his chest.

“The things you say,” he manages after a stricken second where Dorian thinks he may very well start crying.

They stay like that, Leto’s hand on his scars, Dorian leaning on the bookshelf and Leto lying on the carpet, until the moonlight filters into a sunrise.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Dorian has read ‘Tale of the Champion’ exactly once, last year, after Leto finished it. And if he had gone back to check on a few parts after that one reading, that’s no-one’s business but Dorian’s.

There are many things that Dorian likes about the book- people banding together to fight against the odds, an underdog rising to greatness, a mage being hailed as hero, even just of a city.

But the main reason Dorian likes it is the romance. He’ll never admit it- Cassandra would try to coax him into discussing it with her, for one. Any of his friends would tease him about it, because surely they wouldn’t understand- it’s not the romance itself that Dorian loves, but how open it is.

Or, how openly it’s written in the text. Varric may use metaphors, but he never danced around the subject of Hawke and Fenris. And after over twenty years in Tevinter, where the most openly depicted same-gender romance is a vague hint in one sentence of a crappy pulp novel, Dorian finds it refreshing.

And neither Hawke nor Fenris are ever punished for it. Dorian likes that part, too.

He’s fully aware that the characters are real-life people, but after spending a year in fiction in Dorian’s head, it’s hard to keep that knowledge as a fact.

It becomes significantly easier when Hawke comes to Skyhold.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

Dorian doesn’t recognize him at first, just thinks Hawke is a visiting- whatever, dignitary, missionary, solider, they get all sorts nowadays- talking something over with Leto and Varric.

They’re tucked away in one of the side-rooms, one that Dorian is only in as part of a shortcut to the kitchens. He sees that they’re deep in conversation and spares Leto a quick smile and a nod.

When Leto sees him, he waves. “Dorian! Come here, will you? There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

“Ohhh, Sparkler here’s a big fan of ‘Tale of the Champion,’” Varric tells the man, and Dorian opens his mouth to tell Varric he’s a _small_ fan of it at best and it’s no thanks to Varric’s writing skills, when he catches sight of the man’s face and remembers the drawings in the book.

“Dorian- meet Hawke,” Leto says. He nudges Dorian in the side when Dorian comes to stand next to him.

“Hi,” Hawke says. He’s even larger than Dorian thought. He gives Dorian a self-depreciating smile. “So, you’ve read the book. First off: no, Fenris and I never let Varric sit in and watch us sleep together, all those sex scenes were from Varric’s imagination. Which still makes me uncomfortable to think about, honestly.”

“It was for the sake of literature,” Varric protests.

“Right.” Hawke rolls his eyes. “Varric, I’ve read it, too, and let me tell you: it’s not literature. It’s a campy adventure, maybe.”

“Epic tale of friendship and romance!”

“Exaggerated version of a lot of things that were a lot more boring when they actually happened.”

Varric opened his mouth, then let it shut. “Okay, that’s fair. I had to make it sell.”

“And sell it did.” Hawke sighs. “Anyhow, it’s nice to meet you, Dorian. Your accent sounds familiar- where’d you say you were from again?”

“Tevinter.”

Varric’s eyes flick between the two of them as Hawke’s says, “Ahhh,” like he’s just realized something that’s going to come back and bite him in the ass. “Oookay. Right. And those, uh, those rings- mage rings, yes? For- focusing your power when you’re lacking a staff?”

“…Yes, that is what they’re for.”

“Ahhh,” Hawke says again. He clears his throat. “Well. Never seen one of you when I wasn’t trying to kill you! Ha. Okay, not funny, sorry, I’m sure you’re swell. Varric, he’s really on our side, right?”

Dorian tries not to be offended. It’s more difficult than it used to be. Beside him, Leto makes a face like he isn’t trying so hard to not be offended.

“He really is,” Varric says. “One of our best people, actually.”

Dorian brightens, then pretends he didn’t when Varric looks up at him.

“Dorian, you aren’t secretly planning a Venatori attack, are you?”

“Not this week, no.”

Varric laughs, and so does Hawke, surprisingly.

“Right,” Hawke says. “Well! Should be fine, then, as long as you keep him away from our quarters. And anywhere that Fenris might go. How about I send out a warning whenever Fenris goes for a walk? That could work.”

Dorian can’t stop it: “You’re here with Fenris?”

“I am indeed.”

“So you’re still together, then?”

Hawke grins. “He’s managed to put up with me, yes. Don’t know how long it’ll last, though, if I don’t get him the breakfast I promised.”

“That was an hour ago, Hawke.”

“Ahhh,” Hawke says again. “Shit. Okay, I’m going to do that. Goodbye, all. Varric, come with me, I have stories.”

Varric follows, leaving Dorian to look questioningly at Leto.

“Fenris still has a bit of a thing,” Leto says. “Against Tevinter mages.”

“Still? It’s been quite a while.”

Leto’s face pinches in a way that means Dorian’s stuck his foot in his mouth.

“Not that- I mean, he still has cause to dislike Tevinter mages,” Dorian says hurriedly. “Of course.”

“Just try to avoid him,” Leto advises. “Skyhold is a large place. I’m sure it will be easy.”

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Dorian runs into Fenris the third day after he arrived in Skyhold. He’s not easy to mistake for anyone else, what with the lyrium markings.

After a brief swearing streak in his head, Dorian musters up his manners. “Hello.”

“Hello,” Fenris says, and shit, Dorian gets what Varric wrote about his voice. His eyes travel like quicksilver up and down Dorian. “Hawke mentioned you. As did Varric.”

“A glowing overview, I hope.” Dorian smiles his most charming smile.

It does nothing. Dorian wasn’t expecting it would. “They said you were fighting with us. That you were fighting against your countrymen.”

“That I am, yes.” He’s sweating. Is he going to be able to fight Fenris off if he, say, shoves a hand through Dorian’s chest?

“ _Why_.”

It’s not a snarl, but it’s not quite anything else.

Dorian flounders, but only for a second. “ _You’re_ Tevene. Why do you disagree with their way of life?”

Fenris makes a detersive noise at the back of his throat. “Because I was degraded, spat upon, and walked over the entire time I was there. But you- _you_ were hand fed berries by your house-slaves. You were coddled and raised into a life of luxury. Why would you reject that and come live in _squalor_ with the rest of us?”

“I-” Dorian casts his eyes around them. No-one’s staring yet, but they’re attracting glances that look like they’re going to start sticking soon. “I did not-”

“Were you kicked out, then? Forced out by out-corrupting the most corrupt nation in-”

“No! I left by my own free will.”

“Well, how _nice_ for you,” Fenris says, and he’s fully snarling now, his teeth half-bared. “How noble, leaving behind a life of near-royalty to fight the good fight, how _honourable_ , we should all worship at your golden feet-”

“I did not do it to gain praise,” Dorian hisses. “I did it because it’s right. I am doing this because it’s _right_. And when this is over, I will return to Tevinter and attempt to fix all that is wrong in our homeland.”

Fenris’ jaw clenches like there’s a growl trapped behind it. His markings have started to glow, only slightly, hardly enough to notice.

Dorian watches him, his hands at his sides, his rings at the ready in case he needs to defend himself.

But instead of the fight Dorian is expecting, Fenris only glowers at him and stalks off. Dorian watches him go, unsure if he should stay tensed or accept the danger’s over.

“That went well,” he mutters to himself when Fenris is out the door. He goes to get a drink, because after that confrontation, he deserves one.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

That night, Dorian opens the door to find Fenris and Hawke standing there in the middle of a hissed argument. From what Dorian catches, they’re deciding whether to leave or not.

“…Evening,” Dorian says when the both of them stare at him. “Can I be of assistance? Does something need to be lit on fire?”

“Not tonight,” Hawke says. “We’re here because- well, Fenris has something he’d like to say to you.”

Fenris glares over at him. Hawke elbows him back.

“I would like to- apologize,” Fenris says, only meeting Dorian’s eyes in the middle of it. His teeth aren’t even gritted. “I- it was unworthy of me, saying those things to you. Or, no, they were all correct, but I should not have been so hard on you. I now acknowledge that you are a trusted and valued member of the Inquisition.”

Dorian might gape a little. “Thank- thank you, Fenris.”

Fenris grunts. “Thank the spirit. He opened my eyes to it.”

“Spi- oh, Cole.” Dorian has a fleeting moment of panic at what exactly Cole told Fenris to ‘open his eyes.’

“Yes, him.” Fenris looks over at Hawke. “Can we go now. Dinner’s getting cold.”

“’Course,” Hawke says. He puts a hand on the small of Fenris’ back, who leans into it. “Good seeing you again, Dorian.”

“Likewise.”

Fenris says nothing of the sort, but he does meet Dorian’s eyes once more before he leaves. His jaw works.

“Tevinter is… unworthy of the both of us,” he says slowly. “As it is unworthy of any decent person.”

Dorian thinks of Felix, wonders where they scattered his ashes.

“I will do my best to change that.”

Fenris grunts again. “We will see,” he says, and leaves with Hawke at his side.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Dorian catches Fenris and Leto speaking in Tevene, once.

It’s not an exciting conversation- they’re discussing Kirkwall, as Leto learned most of his Elven from an apostate there.

Fenris’ Tevene is clunky, almost, like a limb gone numb that he had to learn how to use again. He speaks softly, and Dorian remembers reading about a warrior elf who spoke softly only rarely, only to certain people.

 _Tevinter left its scars in all of us_ , Dorian thinks in Leto’s voice. He thinks of Krem holding his head high except when he doesn’t, when the old insecurities start to make themselves known from where they’ve been hiding in the back of his body.

They didn’t talk much at the start, Dorian and Krem. Krem actively disliked him at first, but grew used to him in those first few years. Now, Dorian would go so far to call Krem a friend- most of their conversations are in shouted Tevene about what they’d like to change about their homeland. That, or making good-natured fun of Bull, or talking about their separate adventures. The last two are mostly accompanied by the rest of the Chargers.

It’s comforting, mostly, talking to someone in his mother tongue. Makes it feel homely.

 

 

-

 

 

 

Three years into the Inquisition, Leto makes Dorian’s favourite dish.

This raises three questions, all of which Dorian asks Leto in shocked happiness: one, how did he even know Dorian’s favourite dish, two, how did he get the recipe, and three, how did he get any of the ingredients, since most of them are only in Tevinter.

The answers are these: Dorian told Leto once when he was drunk about a year ago, and the second two are both answered with “I’m the Inquisitor, there isn’t much I can’t get.”

Dorian stares down at it- rice and meat and more spices than he’s smelled in an age. “And you _made_ this?”

“I had help,” Leto admits.

Dorian eyes Sera, who is gazing down at her own plate of it in front of her. Apparently Leto has told her she can’t eat until Dorian gets here. “Should I be worried?”

“She didn’t put anything in,” Leto assures him. “Oh, and Vivienne helped.”

“Vivienne?”

“Yes, she’s very handy with spices.” Leto gestures at a chair. “Have some?”

Dorian sits, thanks Leto when he hands him a bowl. The first bite sends him back to days on the river, the sun staining his shoulders. “This is- it’s very good, Leto.”

Leto smiles. He’s had to come up with a fake smile for the visiting politicians, but he keeps his genuine one for his friends. Dorian is glad for it.

“Thank you. I’m very glad it worked out; I thought I burned the meat at one point.”

It is overly chewy, but Dorian doesn’t mention it. Beside him, Sera is wolfing hers down. He asks her, “Better than the bland sludge you lot call food?”

“Mph mph plllsh,” Sera says through a mouthful of food. She flicks a grain of rice at him and it sticks in his hair.

He brushes it off. “Barbarian,” he says fondly.

She steps on his foot under the table, but lightly. He’s struck by the memory of the first time he found her in his nook, wearing a book as a hat and peering out the window.

“Hello,” he had said, and she jumped.

“Shite!”

The book fell off her head and Dorian stooped to pick it up. “And you’re here because?”

“Inky told me you’re having a big dumb freakout,” Sera said. She swung herself to her feet. “Well, not like that.”

“I’m fine,” Dorian said brusquely. “Please leave, this is my space.”

Sera cast a look around. “Uh. Not really.”

Dorian rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Just go. Please.”

She was quiet for a second, and then shrugged. It looked easier on her than it did on their Inquisitor. “Fine. Just wanted to drop by and tell you that you’re getting your smallclothes all knotted up over nothing.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” Sera kicked at the side of a shelf like she was testing if it would fall down. “This ain’t Tevinter. No-one gives a nug’s left arsecheek if you sleep with men, Dorian. You could climb onto the top of the castle and scream that you’ve sucked every dick in Skyhold and the most you’d get is a pat on the back. Maybe a couple of people tellin’ you to get tested, but whatever.”

Dorian stared. “I- right.”

“Yeah,” Sera said again. She scuffed her feet on the floor. “Thought I’d tell you. After all, us bent folk gotta stick together.”

“Bent?”

“I fuck girls,” Sera says, so bluntly that Dorian flinches and has to bite down on the urge to look around to see if anyone overheard.

“Ah.”

She flicked him in the bare bit of his shoulder as she left. That wasn’t the start of their friendship, but it was a turning point.

Over the course of their meal, Sera flicks another five bits of rice at him. Dorian only manages to dodge one, since he’s too busy caught up in the flavour of a meal he hasn’t had in years.

“This is much better than I thought it’d be,” Leto says halfway through the meal.

“’S good,” Sera says in a muffled kind of way, her cheeks bulging.

Bull walks in then, says, “You wanted to see me,” and then zeroes in on the food. “ _Shit_ , that smells good.”

“I invited Bull,” Leto tells Dorian, as if it isn’t evident. “Is that _alokash_? Shit, sorry,” he adds when he realizes his mistake. Nowadays, Leto often slips into other languages without meaning to, or interchanges words from different languages in the middle of a sentence, especially if he’s been talking a lot in a particular one. _Alokash_ sounds Qunlat- Dorian has heard him conversing with Bull in it a lot, lately.

“Is that okay, I mean.”

Dorian, mouth full, just nods. Because unlike others at the table, he has manners.

Bull comes to sit- the chair creaks under him- and make appreciative noises over the food. His involves a lot of swearing.

They fall into an easy conversation filled with gaps when all four of them are chewing. During this, Dorian looks at them and is overwhelmed with such gratefulness over having found these wonderful creatures that he has to bite his tongue a few times to stop himself from beginning to cry.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

The Fade is… unlike anything Dorian has ever experienced, and he hopes to never experience it again. Just being in it causes his skin to prickle. There’s something in his bones that recognizes it, the ragged cliff faces and the upside-down sky, but when he voices this, no-one knows what he’s talking about.

“I feel it,” Hawke tells him. His face is troubled. “It’s-”

He doesn’t finish. Dorian doesn’t know what he could’ve ended it with. He doesn’t know how to describe it, either.

“Could be a mage thing,” Bull suggests. He looks just as troubled, but not as bad as Sera’s, who keeps glancing over her shoulder and twitching and swearing to herself every thirty seconds.

The next time demons attack them, Dorian has no doubt it’s a ‘mage thing.’ His and Hawke’s magic is infinitely stronger in the Fade. He thinks he might understand just what Cole talked about that one time, about magic just being the Fade communicating. Or something. He can’t keep track of what Cole says, what with most of it sounding like nonsense except to the person it makes absolute sense to.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

“They take the shape of what you fear most,” Stroud tells them.

Dorian doesn’t ask what they look like to the others, but it’s obvious they’re being affected. None of them talk as they fight- Sera shoots arrow after arrow into them with a terrified snarl, Bull’s face is a grim mask as he cuts them down. Hawke looks like he’s going to vomit or cry every time he kills one. Stroud has an expression of deepest regret.

Across from him, on a ledge, Leto is stabbing one of them. His eyes are wide and panicked, and Dorian wonders for a fleeting second how one would stab fire.

Then one of the monsters leaps on Dorian and he is forced back into the fight.

Dorian doesn’t ask what they look like to the others, but to him, they change, flickering. Desire demon, Rilenus, Leto-

Leto is the most prominent, and Dorian doesn’t have it in him to be surprised anymore. Of course it would be Leto, of course it’s always Leto.

“Why are you doing this,” Not-Leto keeps asking every time Dorian attacks. He’s confused, betrayed, and each time Dorian kills one- boils its blood or turns it to ice or burns it to death- Not-Leto stares at Dorian with wet cheeks and wide eyes.

Burning them to death is the worst, and Dorian avoids it until he can’t. Those ones- they scream just like Leto does in the throes of a nightmare, and Dorian wants nothing more than to wake him up. When he kills those ones, he has to look up to check his Leto, the real one, is still there and fighting.

The monsters come in waves, and by the time they’re all dead, everyone’s blood-soaked and panting.

“We must move on,” Leto tells them, and no-one says anything, but they follow Leto when he starts walking.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

There’s a graveyard in the Fade with their names on it.

Or, not their names- Hawke and Stroud aren’t in it, but the inner circle of the Inquisition is. They find it because a spirit asks for help and Leto, being Leto- who takes flowers to a stranger’s wife’s grave a day out of their way despite never having met the man, who finds shepherd’s lucky sheep for them, who gives healers rare, murder-to-get-to herbs if they ask for them- decides to help them out.

“We do have an immortal plane to escape from, you know,” Dorian tells him.

“I am aware,” Leto says wryly. They trade a smile, but they’re both too exhausted and shaken for it to gain any traction. “I’ve told you, Dorian. No matter how powerful I become, I refuse to become too busy to lend someone a hand.”

“Well, this isn’t technically _someone_ , this is a spirit, so I think maybe-”

That’s when they spot the graveyard, and Bull asks, “What the fuck is a graveyard doing in here,” and like fools, they go up to look.

Sera says, “What the frigging shit,” in that same angry, trembling voice she’s had for the past several hours of wandering.

Dorian doesn’t realize what it is at first, so when Leto says, “Dorian, destroy it, please,” he starts to ask why.

Then he sees it.

DORIAN  
TEMPTATION

 _What_ , he thinks, and looks towards others.

VARRIC  
ENDING UP LIKE HIS PARENTS

CASSANDRA  
HELPLESSNESS

THE IRON BULL  
MADNESS

SERA  
THE NOTHING

“Blast the fuck out of it,” Bull growls.

Dorian does. It’s loud, and it attracts more fear-monsters, but Dorian doesn’t regret it.

At the end of the fight, Dorian steps on a shard of gravestone. He looks down and reads it without meaning to.

LETO, it reads. The rest is- somewhere, anywhere in the blast radius, bits of it could be flecked in Dorian’s hair for all he knows.

He wonders for a moment if it truly would have said ‘fire.’ After all, none of the other gravestones had something on it that they could touch; they were all concepts, results, emotions.

He gives Leto a sideways look. Leto’s brushing bits of the fear monsters off of his armour. Dorian wonders what they look like in his eyes.

“Who’s up to never talking about any of this Fade crap ever again when we get out of here,” Sera asks loudly. It rings through the carved-out valley.

The rest of them all grunt in agreement, and they keep walking.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

Most of them make it out. In Dorian’s opinion, five out of six coming out alive is remarkable, but that doesn’t stop Stroud from being dead.

In the next few hours, Leto recruits the Wardens, gives a speech about Stroud’s noble sacrifice, talks to several politicians about what it means that he recruited the Wardens, sends a message back to Skyhold assuring his advisors they’re mostly okay, and then falls into bed without removing his armour.

“That’s going to get very uncomfortable,” Dorian tells him from the other side of the room. With the Wardens in tow, they couldn’t afford to get separate rooms in the inn- the one they’re in has somehow squished four beds into one tiny room with no bathroom. Hawke opted to ride back to Skyhold without rest.

“I don’t care,” Leto says into the pillow.

“You’re getting blood all over the sheets.”

Leto doesn’t move for a second, but then he’s sighing and sitting up, hand going to work on unstrapping his arm plates. Trust him not to make the launders’ day more busy tomorrow.

Sera leans over to help- their beds are practically pushed together, so it doesn’t take much. Leto grunts a thank you and she grunts back.

Bull is- somewhere in the inn, Dorian presumes. Probably fucking his trauma away with a kitchen girl. Dorian has faith that he’ll be back before sunrise.

There’s a moment where Dorian considers doing the same with a kitchen boy, but he’s tired down to his bones and he’d really rather fall asleep in a room with some of his favourite people than have anonymous sex in a cupboard somewhere.

Dorian’s growing as a person. He’s rather proud of it.

“Dorian.”

Dorian lifts his head from his pillow. “Hmm?”

“Remind me to look into this when we get back.”

Dorian bursts into laughter. Of course, they’ll have mounds of research to do- he’s sure Leto was taking mental notes in between the sheer terror and demon hoards. Dorian certainly was.

“I will,” he says.

“ _Merci_.”

They grin at each other, and Dorian feels as if he could gaze at him forever, just like this, both of them streaked with blood and demon guts, shaken and weary and dazed.

Bull came back sooner than expected, and his snoring works like a lullaby after spending countless missions in his tent. Across the room, Sera and Leto are wrapped around each other like they often do after one of them has a nightmare or a bad day. Outside, the rain is like stones on the roof.

 _I could live like this for the rest of my life and be happy,_ Dorian thinks, in the fuzzy, mostly-asleep part of his mind. _I truly could._

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

It isn’t for a day after Dorian gets back that he realizes he’s been thinking of Skyhold as home for years now. He’s in the nook when it happens, watching idly out the window as supplies are brought in from Orlais.

It’s a welcome revelation. He hasn’t had many of those lately.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Their first night back in the tavern is quieter than usual.

The Chargers mainly stay away, checking up on Bull without making it too obvious that they’re checking up on him. Bull always says something that makes them laugh and waves them off, but Dorian can see his clenched fist under the table, the one that isn’t holding his tankard.

Dorian expects Sera to drown her sorrows, but it’s late into the night and she’s still nursing her first drink. She doesn’t bother putting up a front, like Bull- she glowers into her drink and snaps at anyone who tries to talk to her.

Despite this, she is sitting very close to Bull, and goaded Dorian into sliding closer. Even with the large table, they’re all squeezed into one corner. Dorian thinks it helps, Dorian on her one side and Bull pressing in against the other.

Dorian moves aside when Leto comes in- he’s sure to help her better than him, after all, and Sera even spares a second to look semi-grateful before going back to pissy.

“Don’t wanna talk about Fade shit,” she tells Leto as he sits down.

“Okay,” Leto says easily. “ _Hennoth_.”

Elven, perhaps. It sounds dismissive. Sometimes Leto doesn’t translate, and Dorian is stuck debating his meaning by his tone or the context.

He’s saved from debating this one when Leto continues, “Me neither.”

“Good.” Sera takes a mouthful. She’s maybe halfway down her glass now. By the time a barmaid drops off Leto’s glass, Sera’s finished the rest of her drink and is going for another.

 _And here comes the drinking her sorrows part_ , Dorian thinks. He can hardly judge; he’s doing the same. The room is pleasantly hazy at this point.

They end up on the floor in Sera’s room. It happens quite often- it’s the place where many drunken nights have ended. Once, Leto declared he wanted to try makeup and went to Sera for help, only to have her laugh in his face as she told him she didn’t know the first thing about make-up or how to put it on.

This led to the two of them going to see Josephine, and the night got a little fuzzy for Dorian after that- he has faint memories of teaching Josephine how to do winged eyeliner, and her teaching him how to put lipliner on in return. Sera’s face had been a disaster in the end, all badly-placed rouge and too-bright lipstick that she cackled at when Josephine gave her a mirror, but Dorian and Leto’s had turned out rather well.

They’ve had many a fun time on the floor of Sera’s bedroom, along with many not-so-fun times which usually included hangover-induced vomiting into buckets or out the window. They’ve been warned against it after Bull’s vomit landed on a nobleman’s head and complained.

Dorian thinks this is going to be a not-so-fun time. It’s quiet, for one, and not the comfortable silence they’ve grown into having.

“I’m still not talking about it,” Sera tells them from where her head is pillowed on Bull’s chest. From experience, Dorian knows it makes a fantastic pillow.

“Okay,” Leto says again.

Bull grunts. “Can I, then.”

Sera lifts her head up from his chest to squint at him. “…Go on.”

“So. Those fear monster bastards.”

“Changed my mind!” Sera rolls off of him, plugging her ears. “La la la la-”

“That went just as good as I thought,” Bull says. He uses one big arm to roll her over so she’s facing him. “Look, I get that you don’t want to, but we need to talk about it. Maybe not now, but you can’t just let it fester.”

“Yeah? Why not?”

“How’s that worked out for you so far, Sera?”

Her nose twitches. “’S worked out great.”

“You don’t have to tell us,” Bull says. “This isn’t gonna turn into some sharing thing. It’s just us saying shit.”

Sera takes her hands away from over her ears. “Fine,” she mutters.

“Thank you,” Bull says. His expression is casual, along with his voice, but Dorian can still see his clenched fists.

Bull had seen Tal-Vashoth, the ones he’s seen so many times over the years: nameless and snarling, murdering anyone in their path without stopping to reason. Every face of those monsters had been Bull’s, his eyes savage and uncaring.

Dorian remembers the gravestones, how much force he’d had to push into his magic to shatter them.

It takes hours of conversation that isn’t Fade-related, but eventually Sera says, “It was- there was _nothing_. Absolutely fucking nothing. I looked into them and they were completely empty. Scared the shit out of me. How stupid is that?”

“It’s not,” Leto tells her. “Stupid,” he adds, just in case.

Neither Dorian nor Leto speak up about what they saw, and Sera and Bull don’t push.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

He’s walking past Leto’s room when he hears it:

“We’ll be sad to see you two go, Fenris.”

“Hawke will be in contact. And I will write. I… did not expect to find a friend here. It was a welcome surprise.”

“I’m glad.”

“Before you leave,” Leto continues. “I. Was wondering if Varric mentioned something about me.”

“Varric mentioned several things.”

“Something specific.”

A silence. It isn’t a long one.

“Danarius died in fear and immense pain. I made it so he bled out on the floor at my feet. He looked up at me as he perished, and in his eyes was pure turmoil.”

“Thank you.”

“It did not make me feel better for more than a moment.”

“I know. I know. I just- it’s better, knowing. I’m glad it was you to kill him. You deserved it more.”

“You are an odd man, Inquisitor.”

“Leto, please.”

Another silence, which Fenris breaks with a cough. “I was once called Leto.”

“I know. Is it odd for you?”

“No. It is my name no longer.”

“Good, so I can keep it.”

Fenris laughs for the first time Dorian has heard him do so. “You may. _Revanas_ , Leto.”

 _Revanas_. ‘Until we next see each other, friend.’

“ _Revenas_ ,” Leto replies. “Give Hawke my best.”

Dorian starts walking again, quiet as he can. By the time the door opens and Fenris walks out, Dorian has already turned the corner.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Dorian reads ‘Tale of the Champion’ once more. It’s enlightening, the second time around, and Hawke and Fenris’ voices come easier.

He remembers something Varric said to him during a game of cards, once- they were discussing the Hero of Ferelden and at some point Varric had told him, _this story doesn’t end well for the heroes. Trust me,_ in that voice that he adopts sometimes that always makes Dorian remember that whatever Varric tries to pretend, his life hasn’t been full of roses.

Dorian holds ‘Tale of the Champion’ and thinks of Leto. He tries to conjure up a time, years later, when Varric will write a book about Leto and the Inquisition.

 _Please let him have a happy ending,_ Dorian thinks as he stares down at the cover and wonders what the last page of Leto’s tale will look like.

In his selfish heart of hearts, he hopes desperately that he will be in it with him.


	3. Chapter 3

Rilienus isn’t the last person Dorian expects to see while preforming a rescue raid, but he’s up there on the list.

He doesn’t realize it’s him, at first- why would he be tied up in a Venatori camp in the middle of the Hinterlands, anyway? So he does a double-take when he does realize it just after taking out the last Venatori agent.

Rilienus seems just as surprised, going by his expression. “ _Dorian_?”

“Rilienus,” Dorian replies, thunderstruck. “What are you- _how_ are you-”

Varric cuts him free and Rilienus walks up to put a hand on Dorian’s arm as if he’s checking he’s truly there. The hand moves from Dorian’s elbow to his shoulder and squeezes, lingers.

Dorian doesn’t look around to check who’s looking at them, he _doesn’t_ \- he’s not in Tevinter anymore, as his friends love to remind him.

Apparently, Rilienus has no such people to say it, because he clears his throat, dropping his arm and standing back all in one swift motion. It’s far too familiar.

Just how many times have they moved away from each other in case someone suspected?

“Rilienus,” says a voice, and Dorian turns to see Leto looking at them both with an expression that Dorian can’t identify, nor one that he has seen on Leto before. But then it’s gone and Leto is putting on his politician smile, giving him a polite nod.

“Sorry, I’ve heard you mentioned before. It’s nice to put a face to the name.”

“All good things, I hope,” Rilienus says, and his laugh makes lines crinkle at the edges of his eyes. He didn’t have them when Dorian saw him last.

It clicks and Dorian has to school his face into something that isn’t nervous- he remembers Rilienus being mentioned, and it wasn’t by him. It was Cole, months and months ago: _Rilienus, skin tan like fine whiskey, cheekbones shaded, lips curl when he smiles. He would have said yes._

 _Ah_ , Dorian thinks. _Shit_.

Varric trades a look with Bull as Bull goes to free the rest of the hostages, but neither of them say anything- which is worrying, since Varric hadn’t been there when Cole said it, so someone must have told him, which means others could know, too.

“All good things,” Leto agrees softly. He shakes Rilienus’ hand and gives him another tight smile. “Would you mind explaining what happened?”

“Yes, of course, but first, I must-” Rilienus stops, eyes caught on the rest of the hostages who are emerging out of the tent. “Oh, thank the Maker.”

He runs to them, gathers a woman and a child in his arms. He presses a kiss to both of their foreheads and looks into their eyes in turn. There’s clear affection there, obvious love. It does something to Dorian’s chest.

“Right,” Varric says. He looks at Dorian, who tries for nonchalance. He’s not the only one looking at Dorian- Leto’s eyes skim the side of his face. Dorian spares a thanks to Andraste that Bull is too far away to see his expression, Maker only knows what he’d gleam.

Rilienus returns with his wife and child, his arm around his wife and his other arm carrying a child who can’t be older than six. “Apologies. I needed to know if my family was safe.”

“I- yes, that’s understandable, of course,” Leto says. He holsters his sword when he catches the child looking at it. “I will have someone else explain things to me, I’m sure you have to catch up with your family. And Dorian.”

Rilienus’ wife is a tiny blonde thing, the kind of beautiful that people stare at in the streets. At Dorian’s name, she starts. “Dorian?”

“Ma’am,” Dorian says. He even throws in a small bow. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but it’s not for Rilienus’ wife to smile widely, her eyes going wide and interested.

“Dorian Pavus! We met once or twice at balls- Juliette Rivana. Or, I was Rivana before I married my dearest husband.”

“Of course,” Dorian says as he attempts to remember any of those dreadful things.

“You spilled mulled wine all down my front and threw up on my shoes,” Juliette continues, still with that pleased smile.

Dorian winces internally. That, he remembers. “ _Ah_ , yes. I did apologize, didn’t I? Please tell me I at least apologized, or offered to have you a new gown tailored. And shoes.”

“You offered both,” Juliette says. “You were the kindest person to ever throw up on me.”

“I hope there isn’t much to compare,” Dorian says, and Juliette laughs along with her husband. Their laughs fit together. They sound like they’ve laughed together often.

Dorian meets the child’s eyes for the first time. “And who’s this?”

“This,” Rilienus says, hefting the child up his chest further, “is our lovely Yvette. Say hello, Yvette.”

“Hello,” Yvette says quietly, then pushes her head into her father’s chest, still eyeing Dorian. She has Rilienus’ blue eyes.

“She’s usually very chatty,” Rilienus says. “But- the ordeal we’ve all just been through, you know how it is.”

“I do indeed,” Dorian says. Briefly, he wonders if Rilienus has ever killed someone- they killed demons in the high parts of training, but never people, though it was heard of. Dorian’s killed six people today and it’s only noon.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Things get busy after that, bringing the hostages back to Skyhold and arranging transport for all of them. During this, Dorian learns that Rilienus and his family had been traveling out of Tevinter while the Venatori mess blew over, when they were ambushed and brought in with a bunch of others who had tried to flee Tevinter.

“We weren’t fleeing, per se,” Rilienus tells him. “Just- getting out for a while, in case something happened.”

“Is it looking like something will happen?”

“In Tevinter?” Rilienus laughs. “Always, my friend. Do you not remember? Has it been that long?”

“Not nearly long enough.”

Rilienus doesn’t comment on that, just picks at his staff. They got it back to him after searching the mercenaries’ tents. “I heard about Felix. I’m sorry.”

“Mmm.” Dorian bites the inside of his cheek. “Thank you. They tell me it was painless, in the end.”

“I heard the same thing,” Rilienus nods.

Felix had advised him about Rilienus, once. Told Dorian to act on his feelings. Dorian had brushed him off like he didn’t know what he was talking about.

“So,” he says. “Married! With a child, no less.”

Rilienus beams, and that’s it- a marriage of love, a true one. Or a marriage with love, at least. Such a thing is rare in Tevinter. “I am. I’m very lucky.”

“Juliette seems lovely.”

“She is.” Rilienus’ mouth twitches like he’s keeping a joke to himself. He used to do it all the time in class, before Dorian was kicked out again. It was his last before Alexius took him in to be mentored.

At Dorian’s questioning look, Rilienus shakes his head. “I will tell you later.”

“I am counting on it,” Dorian says.

They’re sitting on a grassy hill, watching the horses get hooked up to the carriages. Such carriages wouldn’t be fit for a commoner in Tevinter, much less a Magister.

Which reminds him- “You’re a Magister now, yes?”

“A low-ranking one,” Rilienus says, “but yes, I am.”

He’s distracted. His gaze is tracking something, and when Dorian follows it, he looks away immediately.

Rilienus says, “He’s not what I expected.”

Dorian hums again. He plucks at the grass under his hands, rubs it between his fingers. “He usually isn’t, when people meet him. I thought him a trusting fool, at first.”

“And?”

“And now I don’t,” Dorian says. He could continue- tell Rilienus that kindness shouldn’t be mistaken for weakness, that Leto’s absolute trust in people doesn’t mean he’s blind to their faults. He doesn’t tell Rilienus the grace and animal ferocity Leto exerts when he fights; that Dorian has seen him kill without hesitation after realizing there was no other choice.

He could tell Rilienus a hundred million things about Leto to make him understand that he is not fully symbol but not simply just a man anymore, but a hybrid of the two, wearing both of them with his entire heart behind each.

“He is important to you,” Rilienus says. His eyes are soft.

Dorian realizes that despite his best effort, he had been staring. Damn.

He looks away, towards the grass. “I have made- an unexpected number of connections since joining the Inquisition. Leto happens to be one of them.”

“His name is Leto?”

“Yes.”

Rilienus makes a noise in his throat. “It suits him.”

“It does,” Dorian agrees, and then he doesn’t know what to say. _I miss you_ would be truthful. But then again, so would _I have hardly thought of you in the last several years_.

“Tevinter isn’t the same without you,” Rilienus tells him.

Dorian says, “Good.” It earns him a look, to which he doesn’t elaborate.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

They get on the road that evening, and Dorian rides in the front with the rest of his party.

Of course, the first thing that happens is Varric asking, “Not hanging back to spend time with your old friend?”

“No, Varric, I am not,” Dorian says, trying to convey _elaborate any further in front of the Inquisitor and I will skin you_ with his eyes.

“Aw,” Bull says. “He missed us.”

“I missed none of you,” Dorian sniffs.

Leto asks, half-teasingly, “Not even a tiny bit?”

Dorian looks over at him. The sun is framing his face, moving through the gaps in his curls. He’s let it grow out again, and it hangs over the burn scar on his forehead.

“Perhaps a tiny bit,” he allows. “A small fraction.”

It makes Leto smile, even if it’s a subdued one.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

“Everyone is acting very odd.”

Sera looks across at him. Her nose is shoved into a tankard, so her words are muffled: “Yeah?”

“Yes.”

She makes a noise into the tankard. “Might be ‘cause of you and Mr. Fancy Posh Pants, then.”

“Please don’t call him that,” Dorian says, lowering his voice.

“Fancy Piss Pants,” Sera says, and removes herself from the tankard. She drops it down onto the table, then turns to Dorian. “How’s everyone acting weird.”

“They keep- _looking_ at me.”

“Yeah, I dunno why anyone’d look at you, you’re fuck-ugly.” Sera grins.

“Don’t, not even in jest,” Dorian says. “Anyhow. Whenever I’m around, people keep giving each other odd looks and whispering behind their hands and either shutting up or doing it more actively when the Inquisitor shows up.”

“What about Piss-Pants?”

Dorian sighs. “He spends most of his time in the visitor’s part of the castle.”

“And you’ve been visiting him?”

“Of course.”

“In his room?”

“Of- what are you suggesting,” Dorian hisses, perhaps a bit too intensely.

Sera shrugs. She leans back against the chair, enough that it’d fall if it was Dorian doing it. Sera’s chair never falls. “Just pointing out that servants talk, is all.”

“But- we haven’t- his _wife_ and _child_ are in the next room-”

“Yeah, I _know_ that. But the rest of Skyhold don’t.”

Dorian flounders. He signals the barmaid over for drinks. “I wouldn’t! And neither would he, he’s married, he’s _happily_ married at that.”

Sera picks up her tankard again, hides half her face behind it as she drinks. “Whatever you say, _Dor_.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Dor-Dor. A-DOR-able.”

“Please stop.”

Sera laughs, but stops. This, along with her sudden silence, is enough for Dorian to look at her sideways.

“What is it?”

She shifts on her seat, starts tracing her fingernail over a crack in the table. Then she’s looking up at him with such a blazing gaze that Dorian is taken aback by it.

“Don’t hurt Inky’s feelings, okay? Or I’ll shoot you in the dangle-bag and- and I’ll mess up all your precious books. Only yours. Not his. You’re my friend, yeah and I’d- I’d do a lot for you, but Inky comes first.”

Dorian blinks. Then he blinks several more times, like that’s going to clear up what she just said. “I have no intention of hurting Leto in any way.”

“Yeah,” Sera mutters into her tankard. She takes a gulp. “You’ve been calling him ‘Inquisitor’ ever since Piss-Posh-Pants arrived. Bull says you only do that when you’re subconsciously distancing yourself from him.”

Damn. Dorian hadn’t even noticed. “Bull should shut his big mouth.”

Sera burps, then smiles when Dorian wrinkles his nose at her.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

“Hallo,” Sera says, eight hours later, when Dorian opens the door to find her standing half-dressed.

Dorian wipes a crust of sleep from his eyes. “Sera. It is- _hideously_ early.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. Her hands can’t stay still: they worry at the hem of her shirt, at her frayed collar, at the chips of stone that make up Dorian’s doorframe.

“Sera.”

She perks up. “Yeah?”

“Why are you _here_.”

“Right,” she says. “Uh. Okay! So! Juliette, Piss-Posh’s wife?”

Dorian is suddenly wide awake. “Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” Sera nods. “She’s. Uh. Kind of naked in my bed right now?”

“She’s what.”

“Yeeeeeah. Turns out her and her husband have this thing, this arrangement, right? ‘Cause they’re both bent. Their marriage is some weird business agreement where they had sex enough to have a sprog and then never again because, ha, they’re bent. So they have sex with other people sometimes, and sometimes their spouse… thing, they help with it!”

“You had sex with Rilienus’ wife,” Dorian says, lowering his voice enough so it comes out as an appalled whisper.

“What? No!” Sera twists her fingers together. “I was going to bed and I found her all naked and she explained everything and I, uh. May have told her I needed to go check on something and then I ran up here? I think she’s still there. She should be. She might not.”

“…Are you going to sleep with her?”

“Nnnnooooo,” Sera says, like she’s confused about it. “No? Almost definitely not. I don’t do married ones. Breach of trust, all that.”

She bites at her lip. “But- if her husband knows about it, and, y’know, supports it, that’s all okay, right? Right?”

“Sera.”

“What? It makes sense!”

Dorian pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs deeply. It’s far too late- early- for this. “I- do whatever you want, Sera.”

“Right,” Sera says, very slowly. “Ooookay. I’m gonna. I’m gonna do the Tevinter.”

“Sera.”

“Other Tevinter. Girl Tevinter.”

Dorian’s shoulders sag. “This was not worth waking up for.”

“Haaa, yeah. Sorry. But I told you about the arrangement thing, so we’re even.”

“The arrangement,” Dorian repeats.

In his sleep-sluggish brain, it takes a second to ignite. When it does, something must show in his face, because Sera knees him very hard in the stomach.

Dorian doubles over. “Just what the fuck was that for,” he says when he can wheeze it out.

“Dunno,” she says, too fast. Her face twists. “Okay, it was ‘cause I saw that look, you’re thinking of boffing Piss-Posh-Pants! I knew it!”

“Stop calling-” Dorian straightens up. It’s a painful effort. “Why are you worried about that?”

She shrugs violently. Sera is the only person he’s ever met who can turn a shrug violent. “’Cause of Inky, idiot!”

“What does the Inquisitor have to do with this?”

“’Cause,” she says, and then makes a few wordless noises at him. Finally, she gives up and stomps her bare foot on the stone floor. “I’m no good at this, Dorian! Why can’t you just-”

She mashes her fingers together repeatedly, looking up at him with pleading eyes. “You know,” she says. “You know?”

“I don’t,” Dorian admits. “I. Are you gesturing ‘sex,’ because if so, you’re only confusing me more.”

“I’M NOT GESTURING SEX, YOU BIG DUFFER,” Sera yells to the ceiling. “YOU JUST. YOU. FUCKING. UGH.”

She storms off.

Dorian watches her go, then stands in the doorway for a while longer. After a minute of trying to figure out Sera’s very confusing spiel and coming up with nothing, he goes back to bed and dreams of nothing.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

When Dorian suggests to Leto that they research that night- he’s not sure what, by now they just make it up as they go along, depending on the day- Leto’s face twitches and he declines.

“Sorry,” he says. “I’m- Inquisitor things, you know how it is.”

“Right, of course.” Dorian suddenly feels as if he’s navigating a field of traps. “Later, then.”

“Later,” Leto agrees, sending him a smile that doesn’t look right with his eyes.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

The next time Dorian sees Rilienus, he waits until they’re out of earshot of everyone, walking over the grass around Skyhold before saying it.

“So, my friend Sera found your wife in her bed last night.”

Rilienus pockets his hands. “The elf? Yes, she seemed like fun. I hope she and Juliette had a good time.”

Dorian stares at him. Rilienus stares back.

When Dorian continues not to speak, Rilienus sighs. “Dorian, I-”

Suddenly understanding Sera’s panic last night, Dorian coughs loudly. “Well! Good to have that cleared up. If you’ll excuse me, I have- Inquisition things to do. Right now. Do excuse me.”

He walks off, and Rilienus calls his name but doesn’t go after him.

He never did. Dorian never blamed him.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Dorian buries himself in research when he gets back to his nook. Or, he attempts to- he digs quite deep into it, but never gets so far as to bury himself in it before Juliette shows up in his nook.

She clears her throat to get his attention. Dorian twitches like a rabbit spotting a fennec as he notices her presence, but covers it with a hasty smile.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?”

She laughs in a kindly way. It’s the kind of laugh that would have you pushed out of the courts for being soft, back in Tevinter. “You can thank Solas later, he pointed me up here.”

“I will leave myself a reminder to do so,” Dorian says. He slides a bookmark into the place he was up to and closes his book, puts it on the arm of his chair as Juliette comes to lean on it.

“So,” she starts, her voice hushing. “You have been told of the arrangement?”

“I have,” Dorian says. No sense in pretending not to know what she’s talking about, Dorian figures.

Juliette nods, a short, darting thing. It reminds Dorian of a bird he’s spotted once or twice in the Emerald Graves who nods as a part of their mating dance- Juliette shares many traits with the bird, now that Dorian thinks about it. The small, slim body, the fair skin and hair.

“I had expected to come back to my rooms to find a note from Rilienus telling me he’s gone for the night. It would not have been difficult to discern where he went off to.”

Dorian doesn’t squirm in his seat, but it’s a close thing. “I do not sleep with married men, Madame.”

“Do call me Juliette, Dorian.” She bends to perch on the arm of his chair, the part his book isn’t covering. He removes it and shelves it so she has more space, not that she needs it.

Her voice lowers again: “We are married on paper and in court, not by heart. It is not rare, in Tevinter.”

“I am well aware.” He spares a thought to his parents, who started sleeping in separate rooms the moment Dorian was conceived.

“The only thing uncommon about our relationship is that we truly do love each other,” Juliette continues. “Just not in the way we present to people. It is a better deal than I could have hoped, growing up.”

Something enters her voice then, and Dorian thinks back to the bird-boned girl he had spilled wine on when he was sixteen. She had been around the same age, he thinks, and looked even smaller in her glittering dress with sharp edges.

She was not from an influential family, he remembers that- too many children to secure in court, not enough magic in their blood, and they were hanging on with broken fingernails. Their options were to marry well or get shunted out over the coming years.

Not coming from an influential family, yet belonging to a court- would Juliette have been made Tranquil, had she been found out? When it did happen in Tevinter, it would happen as punishment, but only to the families who didn’t have enough power to cover the scandal.

Families like the Pavuses. As much as Dorian is conflicted about it, he supposes he should be grateful, in some twisted way.

Juliette’s smile returns again, but flimsier this time. “Dorian. I’ve heard you mentioned a hundred times by my husband. You were young men together. He misses you. He always said- he says you were the one who got away.”

Dorian’s chest twists with how many times he used to think the same thing about him.

She leans in like she’s examining the material the chair is made of, then says, “You could have more than you could have ever had in Tevinter, Dorian. You two missed your chance. Here’s another. Trust me, they don’t come along often.”

Dorian swallows. He’s spent so long not allowing himself the people- the person- he wants, and now he’s getting this. It’s- not what he thought he wanted, but it’s more than he ever thought he’d have.

But what about Leto?

It’s like a bucket of ice water being upturned over his head.

He excuses himself, and Juliette’s face falls.

“Sleep on it,” she tells him.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

What about Leto?

It plagues him the entire night, none of which is spent sleeping.

What about the last three years- Maker, almost four, now. Dorian is still unsure about how Leto feels for him, exactly- they are close, surely, and they are more intimate than any friend Dorian has had previously, but Leto is tactile with all his friends.

And the tension, the heady thing they both refuse to speak about outside of lingering touches and glances left too long- well, Dorian has been known to have the same tension with Bull, on occasion. Much less occasionally, but it’s there. It’s the same tension he has seen, though it’s scarce, between Leto and Bull. For Andraste’s sake, he’s witnessed the two of them kiss on more than one occasion, one borne from Leto’s curiosity and the second due to mission-related purposes.

After several years of being in close quarters together, Leto has been known to skim the line of friendship with most of his friends- he has pet names for them all, for one, and is affectionate to the point that there are rumours about him sleeping with every single one of his inner circle.

Though, that rumour would have been there anyway, Dorian is certain.

If Leto wished to pursue something more than Dorian has had before- something deeper- would Dorian agree to it?

 _Without hesitating_ is Dorian’s first thought to that. It’s quickly replaced by: _briefly hesitating to panic before agreeing_. Yes, that sounds more accurate.

Would Leto want something deeper? Does he already?

This would be easier, Dorian thinks, if his behaviour with me wasn’t so commonplace. Because everything Leto did for Dorian that made him think it was more, he did for the rest of his friends: he cooked Dorian a meal from his homeland, but he gets everyone gifts. He got Bull a special horn balm, he brought back an intricate bow for Sera, he was constantly getting Solas books, he got Cole a new hat and Josephine multiple trinkets. The man had Dagna craft a magical cock with full sensation for Krem to wear when the need hit, for the Maker’s sake.

Leto was thoughtful about Dorian’s needs, always trying to find a way to make him happy, but he does that for everyone. Leto is perhaps overly affectionate with him, but that is so for everyone he feels close to. He occasionally calls Dorian things that make Dorian’s heart pound with how much weight they have behind them, but he does that with his entire inner circle. He eyes Dorian with lust, but he does that with others.

The only way Leto treats Dorian differently than his other friends is the blushing, which is hard to see due to how dark Leto’s skin is. It doesn’t happen much, but it does happen, and Dorian hasn’t seen him do it in reaction to much else.

For many seconds, Dorian lets himself imagine how Leto would act with a lover- Leto cares intensely, surely he would focus all of that on a lover, give them all he had to offer? Kiss them sweetly, hold them close, adorn them with titles of love.

It both terrifies Dorian and makes him ache. He wants that, to be Leto’s- to be _Leto’s_ , and for Leto to be his in return.

But would Leto want the same? Would be offer Dorian what Rilienus is willing to give him?

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

Dorian thinks, turning it over and over in his head until the morning birds begin to crow.

By the time the sun starts climbing the sky, Dorian is nowhere close to making a decision.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

At midday, Dorian decides this:

Being drunk would make this infinitely easier.

He’s halfway across the room to get one of his emergency wine bottles when there’s a rapid knocking on the door. It doesn’t let up until he opens it to find Juliette panting like she’s been running recently.

She comes in immediately, casting her gaze around the room. “Is he here?”

There’s not much mistaking who ‘he’ is. “He isn’t, no.”

“ _Fasta vass_ ,” she spits. She scrubs her hand through her hair, looks over at Dorian. “Have you seen him at all today?”

“I haven’t left my room since last night,” Dorian tells her, panic starting to swell deep in him. “Has something happened?”

“I’m very much hoping it hasn’t, but I’m starting to think so,” Juliette says. She takes a big, gulping breath. “He went out for a walk last night and has not returned. If it was a dalliance, he would have left a note or found someone to communicate with me. Dorian, I fear a Venatori plot- they were all too focused on him when they captured us, it was like the rest of us were inconveniences, but with him they paid attention.”

“I’ll look into it right now,” Dorian says.

She falls into step beside him. “Good, I shall come with you.”

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

It doesn’t take much prodding the recruits to piece the story together:

Sometime after dawn, a man in a hood was seen half-carrying a man who stunk of liquor out of Skyhold. When stopped and asked, the hooded man had told them his companion was drunk and wanted a special hangover cure at an inn a few miles out of Skyhold.

As Cullen reams said recruits for not probing further and instructs them to go out and search, Leliana sends her best spies to do the same. Josephine sends messengers out on horseback to gather information.

“Our advisors are very skilled at their jobs,” Leto tells Juliette as she gulps down a tonic for her new headache. “We will get your husband back safe.”

She gives them a shaky smile that quickly turns steady when she breathes deeply. Dorian remembers learning the same thing in the courts. “Thank you, Inquisitor. I am confident everyone will do their very best.”

Her hand covers his where it’s resting on her shoulder, then she turns to Dorian. In Tevene, she says, “ _People in the South are very tactile, no_?”

“ _My apologies, my lady_ ,” Leto says in Tevene, slipping his hand out from under hers with a polite smile.

She startles, then covers up her surprise with a smile. “ _Oh! Don’t be sorry, Inquisitor, I find it very refreshing! Where did you learn to speak Tevene?_ ”

“ _Tevinter_.”

She blinks at him. In Common, she says, “Well, aren’t you a wealth of stories.”

“One time he killed a bear naked,” Sera pipes up from a few seats away. She pauses to munch on an apple, then clarifies: “He was naked, not the bear.”

“We were bathing in the river when it came upon us,” Dorian says.

A surprised laugh jolts out of her. “You were there?”

“I bring Dorian along with me on most of my missions,” Leto says, giving Dorian a look and a warm smile. Said smile flickers after a moment, like he’s remembering something, and he looks hastily down at his hands.

It cuts off Dorian’s answering smile just as quickly.

Juliette looks between them, her expression unreadable. Her eyebrows climb her forehead.

“Uh,” Leto says. He clears his throat and stands. “I must- go and check how my advisors are getting along in the effort to find who took your husband.”

Juliette watches him go, then turns to Dorian. “ _You did not mention_ that,” she says in Tevene.

“ _I’m sorry_?” Dorian spares a glance around. Krem is nowhere to be seen and Yvette is being cared for by Bull and Vivienne right now- which Dorian is definitely going to have to see after this- making the only other person in Skyhold who speaks Tevene the man who just left.

“ _Your leader_ ,” Juliette says. “ _He is enamoured with you_.”

Dorian is grateful she used ‘leader’ instead of ‘Inquisitor’ or ‘Leto,’ so  if people were listening in, they wouldn’t hear any identifying words, just Tevene gibberish. It is comforting, in a way, to speak with someone so used to covering their tracks in a conversation, so used to the fear of being heard talking about something they shouldn’t. It gives Dorian a Tevinter-worn solidarity he doesn’t know he has missed.

“Okay, I’m gonna follow Inky,” Sera says as she gets up. As she passes, she slaps Dorian in the back of the head.

“Ow,” Dorian snaps. “What was that for?”

“That sad-puppy look Inky got ‘cause of you just now,” Sera tells him, and gives him one of her mean smiles. He does so hate those; it never means anything good for him. “Gonna slap you one every time I see him all pathetic ‘cause you’re being an idiot.”

He gapes at her. “I did _nothing_!”

“You did _something_.”

“You’re being completely unreasonable.”

She gives him the finger and walks out, tossing a muttered, “Hi, Juliette,” and hasty eye contact over her shoulder.

Dorian scowls at the spot she left from. “ _I cannot believe you are attracted to her,”_ he says in Tevene.

She’s grinning, but it’s watery. “ _We all have our weaknesses, Dorian. Apparently mine is foul-talking Ferelden city elves. She said swears I didn’t know existed.”_

 _“Please don’t tell me, I don’t want to know_.”

She laughs and it goes choked on the tail-end of it. A dry sob makes its way out of her throat, one she tries to smother. She reaches up to touch her neck, strokes her thumb in the hollow there. “Shit,” she says in Common. Then: “Fuck-waffle.”

“Don’t you dare start incorporating Sera’s swears into your vocabulary,” Dorian tells her. “Your status would turn non-existent. You would get shunted from the courts.”

“We are not in Tevinter now, Dorian.”

Dorian’s throat clicks. “I know,” he says.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

He met Rilienus when they were both sixteen on the first day of his new training.

“You’re the Pavus son,” were Rilienus’ first words to him.

Dorian immediately went on defence. “I am. Sorry, you’re obviously not well-known enough for me to remember your name.”

It earned him a laugh, which puzzled him. “Rilienus,” he told him. Then: “You’re just like they said.”

“Oh? What do they say about me?” It was a trick question. Dorian was well aware what was said about him. He did what he could to spur it on.

“You’ve been kicked out of too many training courses to count. No-one wants to teach you. The only thing keeping you here is your talent and your parents’ influence.” He didn’t say it like Dorian expected, like they were damning. He said them like he was listing facts. He even kept his tone friendly.

Dorian shifted, kicked at the hem of his own robes. “I’m sure that’s not all they say about me.”

Rilienus’ gaze went considering. “They also say you’ve been found in the elven whorehouse several times,” he said after a moment. “And have been caught with many people. They say everyone you have been with has been male.”

Dorian squared his jaw, put on his most-used smile. He liked to think it was half-charming, half-daring. “You have heard the tame rumours, I see.”

Rilienus opened his mouth to reply, but then the mentor walked in and he shut up.

It was never a friendship of convenience. Dorian thought he wanted in his robes when Rilienus offered to go over the material with him after they were let out, but Rilienus never showed any interest.

By the time Rilienus did show interest, Dorian was too invested in the friendship to fuck it up by sleeping with him. His reasoning was that a few hours of pleasure wasn’t worth giving up Rilienus’ companionship.

They spent their days lazing by the river, casting ice spells on it and practicing their fireballs. Dorian would drag him to parties Rilienus would never get into with his last name, and Rilienus made sure Dorian didn’t cause too much mischief. In class, anyway.

Their world was summery and if their pinkie fingers often touched as they lay on the grass together and talked, or if their knees pressed against each other’s when they studied Tevene history, neither of them spoke of it.

There were rumours, as always. But the unique thing about those particular rumours is that none of them were true. They never even kissed, though there were many close calls:

The time they were running down the marketplace at night so as not to get caught by the homeowners whose fountain they just wrecked. Rilienus grabbed him and dragged him into a tight alleyway until the danger had passed. They were laughing themselves breathless and didn’t notice how Rilienus was pinning Dorian to the dusty wall until it was impossible to ignore.

They looked at each other, chests still heaving from sprinting. Sweat glittered in the moonlight and Dorian’s gaze had torn itself from Rilienus mouth only to see that Rilienus was gazing at Dorian’s own.

And then Rilienus was pushing away and Dorian convinced himself he wasn’t disappointed, that this was how he wanted it to be.

The time in the library when a night of studying turned into wrestling. The time when they went swimming. The time when they were saying goodbye after spending the day together.

But Rilienus couldn’t keep Dorian out of trouble forever, and eventually Dorian got kicked out and joined Alexius instead.

They still saw each other when they could. Felix, when he and Dorian had become friends, once commented on how close he and Rilienus were. Then, seeing Dorian’s expression, he shut up and neglected to bring it up until Dorian was drinking. It rather ruined the night.

Over time, Rilienus and Dorian saw each other less and less. Rilienus began spending time in other circles, slowly rising up the ranks, and Dorian studied with Alexius and drank and snuck out to sleep with men when things got too much.

By the time Felix was Blighted, Dorian hadn’t seen Rilienus for a year.

He saw him only once after that, and Rilienus didn’t see him. It was on the docks, when Dorian was fleeing Tevinter. He was about to board his ship after bribing the captain to take him. His arm was bleeding from the blood magic attempt, and it was seeping through his robes. As he was trying to heal it with a shaky hand, he looked up and saw Rilienus. He was buying fish with a woman that Dorian didn’t recognize at the time, a small blonde thing who laughed genuinely when Rilienus said something to her.

On the boat ride to Ferelden, Dorian drank enough bottles of wine that he lost track of them, and it was only mostly about the loss of his home, his fortune and the betrayal of his parents.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

They’re off and riding the minute they get a possible location.

“Dorian will come, of course,” Leto says when they’re discussing who to bring. “I doubt he’ll sit idly by when his _e’lhath_ is in danger.”

 _He must have been talking to Solas lately_ , Dorian thinks, and makes a note to ask one of the elven Tranquils what _e’lhath_ means. Dorian assumes it’s not a question he wants to ask Solas.

Bull comes along, and Sera. No-one is surprised- Leto likes to stick with his main party when something of higher consequence is happening.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

It takes only two days of riding before they come across the Venatori camp. They stop a while away, close enough to watch but not close enough to be spotted.

Dorian scrawls a quick message to Juliette: _have_ _found the camp. Infiltrating soon. Will exhaust all efforts to keep your husband safe. Will keep you updated,_ and sends it off with one of Leliana’s ravens.

As they’re taking stock, Bull points. “There.”

Dorian doesn’t ask how he knows what a prisoner’s tent looks like just by the people that are going in and out of it.

“Bull, Sera and I will draw their fire,” Leto says. He looks at Dorian. “You go around the back and get Rilienus out of here safely.”

Dorian nods, and starts moving. He hears it when the fighting starts- the telltale sizzle of fireballs being thrown, the shouts going up that they need aid.

Out of sight, Dorian casts a barrier on the rest of his party. He’s behind Rilienus’ tent now, and uses the sharp end of his staff to cut through the material. He looks in before he steps in- there’s no guards inside, just Rilienus, bloody and unconscious, slumped on the floor with his hands tied behind his back.

Dorian makes the cut big enough to step through and then does, falling to his knees beside Rilienus to cut his hands free. Outside, the fighting is getting louder. He hears Bull yell for Sera to duck.

“ _Fasta vass_ ,” Dorian swears under his breath. Listening to the fighting instead of being in its depths is a hundred kinds of frustrating.

He lifts Rilienus into his arms. Rilienus’ head lolls against Dorian’s chest.

As Dorian is climbing back through the hole he created in the tent, Rilienus stirs. His eyes crack open, just a little. “Dorian,” he says, muzzy.

“It’s me,” Dorian says, relief coming over him in a wave. “You’re fine, we’re getting you out.”

Rilienus grunts. “Juliette n’ ‘vette?”

“They’re safe, they’re in Skyhold. Are you hurt?”

Rilienus shakes his head. “Jus’ bruises n’ concussion. Dorian. Venatori wanted… location of a safe back in… ‘vinter…”

“Yes, yes, that’s all well and good, you can tell us when you’re not bleeding on me,” Dorian tells him.

“I c’n stand,” Rilienus says, and Dorian has to stop and help him into it. “’s fighting?”

“There is indeed fighting.”

“I c’n fight.”

“Yes, you look in top fighting shape,” Dorian sighs. “If you’re going to stand, you might as well walk. Come on.”

He has to help Rilienus do it, but in seconds, he’s limping along under Dorian’s arm. Limping fast, too.

Dorian drags them both out of the way of a fireball when he sees it coming towards them. “Fuck.”

“THE PRISONER,” Dorian hears, and suddenly there’s several more spells heading towards them.

“Fuck,” Dorian says again. “Stay there,” he tells Rilienus, pushing him behind him, and turns to block the wave of spells.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

It’s fast. Dorian doesn’t realize what’s happened, at first.

One of the Venatori agents starts charging at them- out of mana, apparently, since he’s wielding his staff like a knife. It’s wickedly curved on the tip.

Dorian is too busy making sure he doesn’t get his face burned off, but he keeps an eye on the agent as he nears them.

It’s a flash from the corner of his eye: Rilienus is suddenly at his side, hands up, fire swelling in his palms.

“Rilienus,” Dorian barks, but he can’t shove him back behind him without dropping the barrier on Sera, who needs it quite severely right now. “ _Vishante kaffas_ , I promised your wife I’d get you back alive, you bastard, get _back_ -”

Rilienus shoots the fireball.

The agent dodges, less than two feet away now, and Rilienus’ teeth are bared and Dorian is stuck concentrating on the barrier on Sera and watching helplessly as Rilienus-

In an instant, Leto is upon the agent, sword gone but shield at the ready. He knocks him to the ground and Dorian hears the agent gurgle as Leto bludgeons his throat open with the sharp end of his shield.

Relief, again, and Dorian focuses on Sera until she’s killed every agent around her. There are only a few more agent left after that, and Bull takes care of one while Sera shoots another in the head and Dorian boils the last one’s blood in their veins so his organs cook.

“Well, then,” Dorian pants when the last agent falls. “That went much better than I-”

“Dorian, we need you,” Rilienus cuts him off. He’s on his knees by Leto, who is- still on the ground, kneeling next to the agent he stabbed with his shield. Why is he still on the ground?

A cold chill overtakes Dorian as he sees the blood. For a second he can’t move, but then he’s jerking into action as Sera and Bull run over.

“What happened,” Sera demands as Dorian goes to his knees beside Leto. “What’s wrong with Inky?”

“I’m fine,” Leto says, but it’s high, scared, like he’s trying to convince himself of it. “I’m- _fuck_.”

He swears in Eleven, then in Qunlat, then in a language Dorian thinks is Nevarran.

Dorian touches his shoulder. “I need to have my hand on it to heal it.”

“I know,” Leto says. His breath comes in short sips. “I, ah, it just. _Maker_ , this hurts.”

Very carefully, he goes on his side, and then onto his back, hissing with each motion. He doesn’t take his hand off his wound, but Dorian can see the blood is copious.

It’s a gut wound. Dorian loathes gut wounds. People are always more likely to die from gut wounds than much else that Dorian can heal.

“Okay,” Dorian says, schooling his voice calm the best he can. “Take your hand off it now, Leto.”

“Not- not yet,” Leto says. He swallows audibly. His eyes are wide and bright as he stares up at the sky.

Dorian is starting to panic. “Leto, you must.”

Leto makes a trembling noise in his throat and removes his hand.

Dorian doesn’t make a sound, but it’s close. He has to bite back the gasp that forces its way into his mouth and stays hidden between his teeth.

“Fuck,” Leto spits. He’s keeping very still, apart from his hands. They clench in the grass, in his trousers, turn into shaking fists. “ _Fuck_. It’s bad, isn’t it.”

“I can fix it,” Dorian promises. He braces himself for Leto’s pained noise and covers the wound with his hands.

Leto lets out an agonized groan through his teeth. His skin, Dorian is terrified to note, is losing its vibrancy.

“I can fix it,” Dorian repeats. His hands are slippery with blood now, red despite the tinge of green healing magic gets. He presses down harder, puts more pressure on it, and Leto yells.

“Sorry,” Dorian says. His lips are dry; he licks them. “I’m sorry, I know it hurts.”

Bull sits down, eyes anxiously fixed on Leto’s face. His grip is tight around his axe, and he keeps scanning their surroundings. “There’s internal injuries,” he tells Dorian. “Gotta be, with that much blood.”

Dorian sucks in a breath- he knows what that means. Judging from Leto’s face, so does he.

“Just do it,” he says through gritted teeth. He closes his eyes.

Sera gets down on her knees with them, slips one of her hands into Leto’s. “Squeeze as hard as you can, yeah?”

Her voice is shaking like she wants very badly to stop it, but can’t. Dorian’s is the same when he apologizes and pushes his fingers into the wound.

Leto screams. Blood continues to pump out around Dorian’s hand, but it slows as the magic takes hold, sealing his organs back how they were before a blade was shoved into them.

“Sorry,” Dorian says, over and over, every time Leto makes a pained noise. “I’m so sorry, Leto-”

He keeps his eyes on Leto’s face. Every whimper is like Dorian’s being stabbed himself.

Eventually there’s no internal damage to fix, so Dorian eases his fingers back out of the wound and starts healing the skin.

Leto’s passed out at this point, his hand lax around Sera’s. Bull took his head into his lap just before Leto lost consciousness.

They sit there for a long time as Dorian knits Leto’s skin back together.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Even when Leto’s in the clear, nothing but a pink scar to show for the wound, he needs rest after losing that much blood.

Dorian needs rest, as well, after preforming healing magic for such an extended period of time. He falls into a cot in the first tent they set up, and by the time he wakes up, the sun is setting.

He’s still tired, but his thirst overpowers his exhaustion. He rolls over to reach for his waterskin, and then stops.

Rilienus is awake, reading in the last light. He blinks at Dorian when he sees him looking.

“You should be getting sleep,” Dorian says, at a loss of what else to say.

“Concussion,” Rilienus reminds him. “I have to wake up every few hours. Didn’t fall asleep the last time they woke me.”

“Ah,” Dorian says. He sits up, reaches over for his waterskin. As he drinks, he can feel Rilienus’ eyes on him. “Something the matter?”

“You care for him.” He says it in Common.

Dorian tenses, then forces himself not to. “Of course. The Inquisitor is a valued friend.”

“Yes, but you care for him further than that.”

Dorian swallows. His hand shakes as he caps the waterskin and places it back. “You’ve been through a lot these past few days, Rilienus. I’m sure you must be confused.”

“I saw how you looked at him, when you thought he might not make it,” Rilienus says. It’s not accusing, he never was.

He moves closer, and Dorian is petrified into stillness.

“Dorian,” Rilienus says, and it’s almost gentle. “It’s okay. To feel that way about him.”

“I know that,” Dorian snaps, and turns his face away.

He hears Rilienus sigh. “It’s _okay_ , Dorian. This is not Tevinter.”

“Are you simply going to sit there and point out things I already know?”

“You love him.”

Dorian shudders. It’s a reflex, one born out of fear- it starts out as a twitch and then escalates as the words take root.

_Tevinter left its hooks in all of us._

_Yes_ , he thinks. _They’re still there, piercing bits of me. I can’t pull them out_.

He doesn’t look at Rilienus.

“Dorian-”

“My father attempted blood magic to make me straight,” Dorian says to the tent wall. It sits there, cold and ugly in the shared space.

Rilienus is silent. Then he says, soft, “I didn’t know that.”

“Well, now you do.”

There’s a rustle of something- sheets, maybe. “That’s terrible, Dorian.”

“It’s why I left.”

“And you were right to,” Rilienus says. He pauses. “I- can blood magic do that?”

“Perhaps. It could have also left me a drooling vegetable for the rest of my life.”

“It didn’t work?”

“I didn’t allow him to complete the ritual.”

“So it could’ve worked, had you let it. There was a chance.”

It’s curious, eager, almost-

Dorian’s head snaps around. Rilienus’ gaze is guilty, but determined.

“Don’t tell me you’re considering _trying_ it,” he says, unable to keep the appalled tone out of his voice.

“I,” Rilienus starts. He shuffles so there’s an inch more of distance between them. “If I had proof that it would work, maybe-”

Dorian squeezes his eyes shut, thumbs the bridge of his nose. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

“Think about it,” Rilienus tries. “Dorian, we could- Juliette and I could be in love. We wouldn’t have to lie every time we step out the door, we still haven’t decided if we’re going to tell Yvette yet or start lying at home, too- you could return to Tevinter! Be _normal_ -”

Dorian can’t listen to this. His stomach churns. “The only way I’m coming back to Tevinter is to change its very foundations,” he snaps at him. “To take away everything that tries to convince us that if you’re not a straight, powerful Magister then you’re dirt on someone’s heel. _Maker_ , Rilienus- you can’t deny the corruption that has seeped into Tevinter’s very bones-”

“I’m not denying it-”

“But you turn a blind eye, yes? Ignore the slums and stay up in your tower, being doted on by slaves who don’t a choice over when or where they get to shit-”

“You ignored it too, Dorian!”

“And I’m not now,” Dorian shouts. “I never will again. Never again.”

The sudden silence rings through the tent as they stare at each other, only broken by Bull’s gruff cough.

Dorian turns to see Bull tapping on the flap of the tent. His gaze is steely. “Came to wake you up,” he says to Rilienus. “I see you already are.”

“Yes,” Rilienus says. It’s stiff. “Thank you.”

Bull nods sharply. “Dorian, a word.”

Dorian follows him out of the tent. “Is it Leto? Does he need-”

“Nah, he’s fine,” Bull says. He sniffs. “Wanted to get you out of that tent. You can share mine, Sera’s sleeping next to Leto in case anything happens.”

“Oh,” Dorian says, touched. “Thank you. Uh, how much did you-”

“Most of it,” Bull says, and Dorian squirms. “Hey, don’t worry. I won’t tell.”

Dorian doesn’t know which part he’s talking about, but he believes him anyhow. “Thank you,” he says again.

Bull shrugs. “Don’t mention it. But, hey-”

He scratches at the base of one of his horns, clears his throat. “I’m only gonna bring this up once, don’t worry. Look, you should probably let the Boss know how you feel.”

Dorian fights back a flinch. “And why should I do that, then?”

Bull fixes him with a look. “I think you can figure that one out, Dorian.”

And, as promised, he doesn’t bring it up again. Dorian didn’t think he would.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

The ride back to Skyhold is uneventful, apart from a small ambush of thieves whom they kill off in under five minutes. Dorian doesn’t know when he started counting ‘small ambushes’ as uneventful.

Leto winces sometimes as they ride, and Dorian keeps a close watch on him despite Leto’s repeated assurances of his wellbeing.

Because of this, Leto catches Dorian looking at him many times. He used to smile, whenever that happened, either a big one towards Dorian or a small, private one to himself.

He doesn’t do that anymore, Dorian notices. There’s the occasional smile, but it’s tinged with something that turns it sad.

Dorian is starting to think on Bull’s ‘telling Leto how he feels’ line of action.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

When Rilienus announces he’s leaving, Dorian isn’t surprised.

He is apologetic, as well- “When you come to Tevinter to change it for the better, do let me know,” he says, with that smile that used to make Dorian’s stomach flutter.

“I will,” he says, and is not sure if it’s a lie or not.

“Juliette informed me to tell you she’ll be writing to you.”

“Really?” Dorian finds he’s pleased. “I look forward to her letters.”

They do not hug. Tevinter has indeed left its hooks in them: instead they squeeze each other’s shoulders and wish each other well.

Rilienus still looks guilty. Dorian probably isn’t doing much to help- he’s gone guarded, he knows, and it shows through his polite, distant smiles.

“Before I leave,” Rilienus says, and reaches into his front pocket. He takes out a small pile of paper and pushes them into Dorian’s hands.

Dorian looks down at them- they’re bound in string, the papers are ratty and creased, as if they’ve been kept around in the back of some desk somewhere and read often. They’re all burned around one edge, and as he sifts through them, he notes that each is in a different language, none of which he can read.

“What are these,” he asks.

“I didn’t know either, at first,” Rilienus says. “I found them when I went to inform the Inquisitor I was leaving. He was discussing something with one of your advisors, and asked me to wait in the next room.”

“Just rooting around in his fireplace, were you?” Dorian fingers the burn marks. He can’t help the wryness that sneaks into his voice. Old habits, he supposes.

“It was near the fireplace,” Rilienus corrects him. “There was a layer of dust on them, like they’d been there for several days. From their position, I assumed he meant to burn them but they fell off the logs while he wasn’t looking. I would have just placed it on the nearest desk, but as I was walking over, I- skimmed them.”

“Oh? Have you learned Qunlat since I saw you last?” He’s mostly sure one of them is Qunlat.

“I couldn’t read any of it,” Rilienus admits. “Except for one word which was constant throughout all the letters.”

“Yes?”

“Your name. There were no others.”

Dorian’s hands tighten around the letters before he forces himself to relax his grip. The papers feel fragile. “My name,” he repeats.

“Mm.” Rilienus is smiling. “Thought I’d hand them over, since it’s likely they were addressed to you.”

“Ah,” Dorian says faintly. “Thank- thank you.”

Rilienus meets his gaze, still smiling. “ _Revanas_ , Dorian.”

“ _Revenas_ ,” Dorian echoes, out of habit more than anything else. He waits until Rilienus is gone before staring down at the letters in his hands. Suddenly, they feel more than a little dangerous.

He skims them and yes- there’s his name, over and over, the only consistent thing about them. _Dorian, Dorian, Dorian_ , used over and over among words he doesn’t understand.

After he pulls himself out of his faint panic, he folds them carefully and places them in his pocket. He keeps only one in his hand: the Qunlat letter.

Pulling in a shaky breath, Dorian starts walking down to the Tavern to speak to Bull.


	4. Chapter 4

“I wish to preface this by saying that we will never speak about this again,” Dorian says in a rush as he pushes the letter into Bull’s hand.

Bull blinks down at him. He hasn’t said anything apart from ‘sure’ when Dorian stalked into the tavern, told Bull he needed to come with Dorian right this second.

“I need you to translate it,” Dorian says as Bull looks down at the letter.

“Uh-huh,” Bull says, eyes starting to track the words. “And just why do you need to have a letter in Qunlat translated right this se- oh.”

“What,” Dorian hisses. He resists the urge to grab the letter out of Bull’s hands and flee. “What, what is it?”

“Uhhhhh.” Bull clears his throat, brings his other hand up so he’s holding the letter with both. “You want me to read it out to you or write down a translation.”

“Read it. No, wait.” Dorian groans. “Fuck. Write me a translation. Come with me, I’ll get a quill.”

Instead of Bull asking, _what, right now_ like Dorian expects, he follows Dorian when he starts walking. It only makes Dorian even more terrified of what Bull read in the letter.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Dorian stares at Bull as he’s writing until Bull tells him to cut it out, at which point he stares at his hands and the chairs and the letter Bull’s translating from.

It doesn’t take long, about ten minutes, and Dorian rips the paper out of his hands when Bull holds it out.

“It doesn’t sound as good in Common,” Bull says. “There are words in Common that aren’t there in Qunlat, so I had to improvise with some of it-”

“Shh,” Dorian tells him. He reads as fast as he can without missing bits, and halfway down the page his cheek twitches. Then his lip trembles.

“Ah, shit,” Bull says as Dorian starts crying.

“I’m fine,” Dorian snaps, the emphasis of it mostly lost due to his shaking voice. “ _Fuck_.”

Bull rubs his hands on his massive knees. “You need some time?”

“No, I’m fine,” Dorian insists, wiping his eyes. He sniffs, still reading the letter. He holds it in front of him so he doesn’t get tears on it.

When he finishes it, he wipes his eyes again with the back of his hand. “Thank you,” he says, not looking at Bull.

“Don’t mention it.”

“Never again,” Dorian reminds him.

“You got it,” Bull says. He rocks awkwardly in his chair, not an easy feat in such a small one. “Uh. You going to go see the Boss now?”

 _Yes_ , Dorian nearly says. Then he hesitates, reaches into his pocket for the rest of the letter.

Bull stares at them as Dorian puts them on the table. “Need me to translate more?”

“No,” Dorian says as he unfolds them. “I need you to discern what language the rest of these are in.”

Bull leans over to see them. He chuckles. “Boss, you son of a bitch. That one’s Orlesian,” he adds, pointing at the one on the far left.

“Yes, that I had figured out. And that one is Elven.”

“Nevarran,” Bull nods at another one. “What, he didn’t do any in Tevene?”

“Not that I’ve found,” Dorian says. He wipes at his cheeks again, then scowls when kohl comes away on his hands. Damn. “Okay, so- I can hardly get Solas to translate the Elven, I’ll get a Tranquil to do it. And- are there any Orlesian or Nevarran Tranquils?”

“Nope,” Bull says, and looks across at him. “You’re going to translate all of these before talking to Leto, aren’t you,” he says flatly.

“Of course. What if one of them is about how he’s fallen completely _out_ of love with me? He did attempt to burn these, you know.”

Bull snorts. “Yeah. Dorian, I’m gonna take a wild guess and say it was when he did that when he thought you and Rilienus were going to run off to fix Tevinter together.”

“…Oh.”

“Yeah,” Bull says. “ _Oh_.”

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

_An excerpt from the Qunlat letter, read again hastily by Dorian Pavus as he crosses the courtyard:_

‘Both you- and my love for you- are a part of me, as set in me as the mark, as the burns on my back, as the bones in me. It is a fact of me, now: Inquisitor; orphan; loves Dorian with all he has in him.

It is a fact of me, as deep in me as my blood. When my heart beats, it sings of you.

It gets louder when you look at me.’

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

He tidies himself up before heading to speak to Cassandra. Bull even hands him a handkerchief to wipe the streaks of kohl off his face.

She’s training when he gets there, like always. At first he simply watches as she ducks around the dummy, shoving her sword into parts that Dorian would hate to have a sword shoved into.

“ _What_ , Dorian,” she says, eyes on the dummy, when a minute or so have passed.

Dorian takes a bracing breath and steps up to her. “May I speak with you privately?”

She does a double take, then lowers her sword. There’s blood crusted across her knuckles, Dorian assumes she’s been punching trees again. “What about?”

Dorian flounders. The letters are a burning weight in his pocket. “Privately, please.”

“Right,” she says. She still sounds half-suspicious, but concern is evident in her tone. As they walk to the nearest empty room, she shoots him many looks that Dorian ignores.

He doesn’t meet her eyes again until they’re away from the public gaze. “I need you to translate a letter for me and have complete discretion about it.”

“A letter?” Cassandra frowns.

Dorian takes the letters out of his pocket, rifles around for the Nevarran and holds it out.

She takes it, dubious. “Is this an Inquisition matter?”

“…Of sorts, yes.”

 She skims the first sentence. Halfway through the first paragraph, her eyebrows raise.

“I- what is this,” she says, looking up at Dorian. Her cheeks are flushing. Maker, is he getting her to translate a smut letter? “Dorian. Why are you having me translate a love letter to you-”

Her eyes go wide. “Is this from the _Inquisitor_?”

“Yes.”

“Why did he write you a letter he knows you cannot read?”

Dorian shifts on the spot. “He is- not aware I am in possession of it.”

“I- oh,” Cassandra says. Her eyes have drifted back to the letter as Dorian spoke. “Are you- the two of you-?”

“I am still figuring that out, and you would help me immensely if you would please translate the letter immediately.”

“Of course,” Cassandra says. Her hand comes up to cover her mouth as she continues reading, and Dorian has to bite back the bizarre urge to laugh- finding out their very own Seeker was a hopeless romantic had been hilarious when he discovered it years ago. It still hasn’t lost its lustre.

She gasps. Actually _gasps_. “This is- this is magnificent, Dorian. Beautiful.”

“Yes, yes, I’m sure,” Dorian says, telling himself that yanking it out of her hands would do no good now. “I seem to notice you are not translating it.”

“Right,” she says distractedly, and clears her throat. “Um. _I cherish you the best way I know how_ -”

Dorian thinks he might pale. It’s hard to be sure without a mirror. “Don’t- _kaffas_ , woman, don’t read it out loud! Write the blasted thing down!”

It’s telling how gone Cassandra is on the letter that she doesn’t ream him for swearing at her. “Of course. Did you bring me a quill?”

“I- did not think that far,” Dorian says.

She nods, eyes still going down the page.

“Stop reading ahead!”

“Yes,” she says, but it’s a moment before she wrenches her gaze away. “Can I keep a copy of this?”

“What? No!”

“Right,” she says, shaking her head as if to clear it. She squares her shoulders. “My apologies. Follow me.”

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

They grab the first quill and paper they find.

They bewilder a recruit while doing it, as having Cassandra Pentaghast confiscate your parchment and quill and inform you that they need it for urgent Inquisition business would bewilder most people.

After finding the materials, Cassandra heads up to her room and sits down at her desk. Dorian stands and makes an annoyance of himself by pacing.

After a minute or two, the sound of scribbling is punctured by another sound Dorian can’t place until he looks over at Cassandra and sees the tears dripping down her cheeks.

“Are you _crying_?”

“Of- of course not,” she says, and scrubs at her face with her hand.

Dorian comes over. “You’re crying on my letter!”

“It is very emotional,” she snaps up at him. Her eyes are red and puffy in a way that Dorian desperately hopes his aren’t. “Let me finish your damned translation.”

He steps back. In the next few minutes, Cassandra lapses in and out of crying, though she seems determined to stop every time it starts. She keeps sniffing the tears back.

Finally, she sits back and holds out the translation. “You never saw me like this.”

“Agreed,” he says, taking the letter.

 _I refuse to turn into a weeping mess this time_ , Dorian vows.

He breaks it about a third of the way through the first paragraph.

“Shut it,” he tells Cassandra when she stares at him. “You still have eye makeup halfway down your face, you can hardly talk.”

She averts her gaze, obviously uncomfortable, until Dorian finishes the letter.

“It _was_ very emotional,” Cassandra says tentatively when it’s safe to make eye contact again.

Dorian sniffs. He’ll have to apply his kohl again before leaving. “It was, yes.”

Cassandra stands, gives him the original copy of the letter. It looks like a painful parting process; she gazes mournfully at it as it vanishes into Dorian’s pocket.

“Thank you,” Dorian tells her.

“You’re welcome,” she says. She bites her lip. “Thank you for- trusting me with it. And letting me read it.”

Dorian lets out a wet laugh. “It was the high part of your week, wasn’t it.”

“I had no idea the Inquisitor could write so beautifully,” Cassandra says with in that same breathy voice she gets when she talks about the romantic developments of the main character in _Swords and Shields_.

“Nor did I,” Dorian admits. He swallows. “Please keep this to yourself.”

She nods eagerly. “Are you- have you told the Inquisitor you have read his letters?”

“Not yet. I need to get one last letter translated beforehand.”

“Yes? What language is it in?”

“Orlesian.”

Her hands stop twitching hopefully, like they wanted into Dorian’s pocket. “Oh. Josephine or Leliana could help with that, I guess.”

“Josephine,” Dorian says. “There is no way in all of Thedas that I would let Leliana read these. She’d use it as blackmail.”

He pauses. “Though- Josephine has been known to be rather cutthroat, in her own way. I’d hate to be allied against her in the courts.”

Cassandra continues to look at him. If it wasn’t Cassandra, Dorian would say she was fidgeting.

He sighs. “Yes, Cassandra?”

“May I read the translated version after Josie is finished?”

“Absolutely not.”

She sighs, but doesn’t look surprised.

They both jump when there’s a short knock and the door begins to open.

Dorian and Cassandra both freeze, then scrabble to clean their faces of any trace of crying in the scant seconds between the door opening and someone seeing inside.

It’s Leto. Of course it is.

“Cassandra,” Leto starts, “I thought I’d ask you a question and Cullen told me you were in- oh, hello,” he says as he takes in the room. “I- oh,” he says again.

He wavers near the door. “Are you two- are you okay? The two of you?”

Both Cassandra and Dorian blurt, “Yes,” at the same time. Dorian forces himself not to check if there’s still tracks of kohl down his face.

Leto stares at them, eyes darting from one to the other. “O…kay,” he says slowly, taking a step back towards the hallway. “I’ll. Okay, then. Cassandra, I’ll… talk to you later?”

“Yes,” she repeats.

Dorian makes a mental note to never send her on missions that require lying. The woman is making vicious eye contact with Leto like he’ll find her out if she so much as blinks.

He stiffens when Leto looks over at him. He thinks Leto notices, because something in his face ticks. He makes like he’s going to say something, but then he’s giving Dorian a tight smile.

He nods at Cassandra. “I will see you later, Cassandra.”

He leaves, and Dorian lets his shoulders sag.

 _Brave_ , Leto had called him once. Not quite, in Dorian’s opinion.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

_an excerpt from the Nevarran letter, read again by Dorian Pavus as he pauses in the middle of the stairs:_

‘I cherish you the best ways I know how: I touch your shoulder hello. I call you things that are blisteringly true. You haven’t been cherished, I think. Or at least, not in the way you deserve. I would do my best to correct that, if you’d let me.

You deserve more than the men you take back to your bedroom. They do not appreciate your bravery, your goodness, your doubt and your hard-won belief. They don’t appreciate the miracle that is the fact of you, the line of your neck, the shock of your laugh, the creases next to your eyes.

(I have imagined pressing my mouth to them often.)

Dorian, my heart- you deserve so much more than you’re used to. You deserve to be kissed in the open and not instantly look around in fear in case you were seen. You deserve love and affection and safety, and all the things you deny yourself. You deserve to be treasured like the masterpiece of a person you are. You are so many kinds of magnificent, I do not think you know just how much of a wonder you are, despite the things you say.

You deserve all I have to give and more. Every compliment I have ever paid you has been true.

If you’d accept it, I would cherish you in every language I know. You make me wish for new words to describe the way your head tilts when you’re reading, how the light slants through your hair.

I would cherish in ways I have not learned yet, in ways I will learn with you, with stumbling, love-dumb fingers.

I would always be looking for new ways to cherish you, if you’d allow me to.’

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

“Hello, Dorian- my, are you well?”

“Am I-? Yes, of course.” Dorian resists the urge to check his face to see if he’s as bad as Cassandra was. His kohl is impeccable, at least.

“My apologies.” Josephine nods at him. “Why brings you to my office?”

“I,” Dorian says, and then has to stop to clear his throat. “If you find the time, I was wondering if you could translate a letter for me.”

“Me? Of course,” Josephine says, blinking in surprise. “From what language into what language?”

“Orlesian. Into Common.”

“When would you like it by?”

 _Now_ , Dorian doesn’t say. His palms itch.

“As soon as possible, please. Today would be- today would be very good.”

Josephine’s eyes travel over him. They flicker into slits for a moment before returning back to bright-eyed, warm Josie. Some people forget she used to be a bard, that she worked the courts like her own personal chessboard.

Dorian can’t afford to forget things like this.

“What is this letter about,” she asks.

“It’s of a… personal matter.”

“Oh!” Josie straightens her posture, if that’s possible. “Well! I will get it to you as soon as I can, Dorian. May I have it now?”

Dorian’s head dips in a nod. He reaches into his pocket and brings out the stack, rifling through to the Orlesian letter.

He hands it to her, says, “And could you please be as discreet as possible. Do not discuss the contents of the letter with anyone, and have it brought straight to me when the translation complete. And I’d like the original version with it, if you please.”

“Of… course,” Josephine says, a little less eager now, eyeing the letter warily as she sets it on her desk.

Dorian supposes she thinks it’s a smut letter. He doesn’t bother correcting her- she’ll uncover the truth when she reads it. Also, Dorian isn’t entirely sure it _isn’t_ a smut letter.

He leaves without waiting for her to finish, though leaving the letter in someone else’s hands makes him twitch with every step he puts between him and the letter.

He likes Josephine, but he is determined to never let her see him cry, and he thinks if he read the letter in front of her, he’d have a repeat of the last two. It’s bad enough that Bull and Cassandra have seen him sob like a child with a skinned knee, he’d rather not add another person to the list.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

Dorian is utterly useless for the next two hours.

He’s loathe to run into Leto again, so he hides in his room, attempting to read. It’s not quite successful- he catches himself reading the same page over and over at least four times.

Cole appears in the room at one point, causing Dorian to jump and toss his book at him.

“Sorry,” he says when Cole steps aside to avoid it. He adds, “I’ve told you repeatedly not to do that, Cole.”

He gets a blink as an answer, then: “Warm gaze, but it’s directed at _him_ , now. Swallow the bright envy- his happiness is what’s most important, even if he leaves with him, it’s bearable if he’s happy-”

“Out!”

Cole vanishes and Dorian lets himself breathe. He goes to pick up his book from the floor and opens it up. It doesn’t matter which page, he’s hardly paying attention anyway.

When there’s a knock on the door, he all but launches the book from his lap rushing to get it.

“Uh, hi,” the messenger says, most likely taken aback by Dorian’s exuberance. He holds out a sealed envelope. “Translation from Josephine. And she said to tell you that she apologizes for the wait and, uh. Good luck.”

Dorian’s throat clicks. “Tell her I say thank you.”

“Will do,” the messenger mutters, giving him another look before leaving. Dorian doesn’t blame him, he supposes he looks quite manic by this point.

He closes the door behind him and opens the envelope where he stands.

This time, he manages to make it halfway through before tears start down his cheeks.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

_an excerpt of the Orlesian letter, tucked in Dorian’s pocket as he takes the stairs two at a time to get to Leto’s room:_

‘The summer I turned eight, my mother and I were walking by the river by our house. We sat and dangled our feet in the river to cool ourselves, and she told me about a girl she loved before she met my father. They were only together a month before the girl was shipped away to Antiva to be married off, and my mother couldn’t follow. She told me that although they loved each other for mere weeks, she felt as if she had loved her a lifetime.

I do not feel like I’ve loved you a lifetime, yet. We are still young, there are so many years to love you in.

But if you let me, I’d love you a lifetime.’

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

He tells himself not to hope. It’s a well-worn habit, and a hard one to break.

After all, Leto did try to burn the letters- that could be a sign he no longer feels the same way. But Dorian goes through all four years of their time together as he climbs the stairs to Leto’s room, and despite himself, hope roars in his chest.

They’ve hardly seen each other since Rilienus arrived weeks ago, and Leto rejected Dorian’s invitations to spend time together during that time. But it was always with a face like he regrets it, like it pains him to do it; always with a smile that looked more for Dorian’s benefit than anything.

Did it pain Leto, watching Dorian walk the grounds with Rilienus? Did he assume they were falling back in love, or that they never fell out of it, and that Dorian was going to leave him sooner than Leto thought?

Does it hurt him, knowing Dorian is going to return to Tevinter after this is over? Has he thought about begging him to stay?

His mind whirls with possibilities as he reaches Leto’s room. He goes to knock, but stops with his hand hovering over the wood at the last second.

What will he say? Will Leto be angry about Dorian reading the letters, force him to leave before he can say anything? And if he truly doesn’t feel the same way, or doesn’t want a relationship- it will crush Dorian more than he has ever been hurt before. Surely it would be easier not to put himself through it-

Dorian yelps as the door opens as his fist is hovering just in front of it.

Leto yells in response, leaping backwards, hand going to his sword before he sees who it is. “Dorian?”

“Hello,” Dorian says. He’s panting. He shouldn’t have run up the stairs like a fool. “I- hello. Leto.”

“Yes,” Leto says, blinking hair out of his eyes. Maker, Dorian has always loved his hair, the precise, tight curls of it, how it bounced when he rode horses. He’s always wanted to run his fingers through it, and the thought that Leto might let him-

“Dorian,” Leto says.

Dorian realizes he’s been staring at Leto’s hair for the past several seconds. “Hmm? Oh, I- yes. I’m here to- to-”

 _Kaffas_.

“Take your time,” Leto says after a few silent seconds.

“Yes,” Dorian says weakly. “I- was going to ask you if- that is, I was going to- I- _you_ -”

Leto frowns. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Dorian says, louder this time. “Could we- I would rather not say this in a hallway.”

Something darts across Leto’s face, fear or something akin to it. “Okay,” he says after a moment.

He stands back to let Dorian in, and Dorian steps into the room he’s spent hundreds of hours researching in, talking with Leto and eating food they had delivered from the kitchens. He stares around it, then back at Leto when he hears the door snick shut.

“Right,” Dorian says. He takes a step so he’s standing in front of him. “Right,” he says again.

“You got that far,” Leto says, like he’s trying for a joke but isn’t quite making it.

Dorian nods. “See, the thing is- the thing _is_ -”

He twists his hands together in front of him, then forces them back to his sides. _How do I put this?_

“As Rilienus left this morning,” he starts, or tries to start, because Leto’s face twitches and then he’s telling Dorian how sorry he is that Dorian had to see him leave.

Dorian pauses, momentarily derailed. “Hmm? No, I- well, I will miss him, but not- we weren’t- nothing ever happened,” he says in a rush.

Leto inhales. It takes a while for him to speak, and when he does it’s just a quiet, “Ah.”

“Yes,” Dorian says. “You needn’t- you were very-”

He laughs out of nerves more than anything and starts babbling. “You took a blade to the gut for the man, you ridiculous- you- why did you even do that, you talked to him half a dozen times at most, you didn’t _like_ him-”

“I liked him fine,” Leto says, shrugging. His shoulders are tight through the motion, like always, and he looks towards the wall. “I- well, no I didn’t care for him, but you- love him, so I couldn’t exactly let him die, could I?”

Dorian stares. The words lodge in his throat. “I- cared for him very much, once,” he manages after what feels like an age. “But I don’t any longer.”

“Oh,” Leto says again, higher this time, a little louder.

“You,” Dorian says, and wets his lips. “You were willing to die for someone just because you thought I cared for them?”

Leto’s gaze goes straight to the wall again. “Well, I- he made you happy. I thought he was your-”

He sucks in a breath, blows it out, swears quietly in Qunlat. Then he says, “He made you happy. I only ever wanted you to be happy, Dorian. So, yes, I was.”

Dorian _aches_. He wants to tell Leto every sweet thing he’s been afraid to say, something that would even hold a candle to the lines that made Dorian cry, but the words are another thing Dorian let himself have and they get lost on the way to his throat.

Leto is still examining the wall, lips pursed. He startles when Dorian puts a hand on his cheek. His gaze flies to meet Dorian’s.

“What-” he stops, drawing a shocked breath as he sees Dorian’s eyes, shiny with unshed tears. “Dorian?”

“You- moronic-” Dorian starts choking out, and oh, Maker, he came here to confess his feelings, not insult the man of his immense affections.

Leto’s eyes dart over Dorian’s face, lips parted like he wants to say something but is lost for words.

Those lips- Dorian has dreamed of those lips, his favourite flower in the South is one that is almost the exact shade of pink as Leto’s lips.

Dorian leans forwards and presses his mouth to them, inhaling Leto’s gasp when it floods from his throat.

 _Oh_.

Dorian has kissed- he’s kissed many, many times, but never with someone he cares about as deeply as he does for Leto. It lights up his bones, spreads through his blood like a lightning spell, traveling all the way to the ends of his fingers and toes to make them tingle.

Their mouths move together softly, Leto lifting his hands to cup Dorian’s face, and when the kiss ends, Dorian is too giddy with love to say anything but: “Rilienus gave me your letters, the ones you tried to burn. I had them translated, I, I-”

He has to stop to take a breath in. “Those things that you wrote- please tell me you still mean them, Leto. I- if your affections have faded, or if you do not wish-”

Leto is staring at him, his face unreadable apart from his shock-wide eyes. Dorian looks into them as he says, voice shaking, “I would have it that we were together for the rest of our days, as- as each other’s. I would have us be in a relationship.”

He stops, still panting slightly.

Leto continues to stare, eyes tracking his. After the worst pause Dorian has experienced in all his 30 years, Leto says, “You want a relationship,” in a tiny, hopeful voice that just about wrenches Dorian’s heart out of place.

“I do,” Dorian says. “I- yes. Very much. You’re-”

He can’t get it out, no matter how much he feels it, so instead he says, “ _Amatus_ ,” and hopes Leto understands. His thumbs stroke Leto’s fine cheekbones.

“ _Amatus_ ,” Leto echoes, the start of a grin on his face. “Truly?”

“Truly,” Dorian says. His knees are weak with the beginning of relief.

Leto laughs high and beautiful, like a church bell, and kisses Dorian again.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

“Mmf,” Leto says some time later, just after the bed catches them. He pauses to kiss Dorian’s neck, then says, “Did I ever tell you I’m a virgin?”

Dorian freezes in mid-motion of undoing Leto’s trousers. “I- really?”

“No, I thought this would really set the mood,” Leto drawls.

Dorian kisses his hip. He has missed Leto being wry with him.

“I know it’s odd,” Leto continues. “But it just- never happened, I guess. Well, there were working women who offered-”

“Working women?”

He gives Dorian a look. “Women who exchange sex for money,” he elaborates, because he’s always refused to say _whores_ or anything of the like.

“But I never took them up on it,” Leto continues. “I just always felt like- well, if I ever have sex I’d want it to be good for them, as well. And I guess it can be that way with working women, but I’d never know if they were being genuine or if they wanted a tip. I always thought that if you want to have sex, then have it, but if it’s someone’s way to make a living- well, wouldn’t you get bored sometimes? I’d never be able to get it out of my head that yes, they were moaning and everything, but _really_ they wanted to go back into the other room and finish their puzzle.”

Dorian’s shaking with laughter by the time he finishes, face half-hidden as he presses it into Leto’s thigh. “Maker, I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too, _amatus_ ,” Leto tells him. He reaches down to stroke the hair back from Dorian’s forehead, and Dorian closes his eyes to revel in it.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

“Inquisitor, there is an urgent matter we need to AAAUGHHHHH.”

Dorian jolts awake in time to see Cullen’s expression before his clipboard comes up to cover his face. It takes a moment of looking around to see what Cullen is blushing so hard over- Leto’s ass is bared for all of Thedas to see.

He’s also waking up due to the shout, though more slowly than Dorian. “Whuzza?”

“Cullen is having a haemorrhage,” Dorian tells him. “Give him a moment.”

Leto mumbles something and then sits up.

Dorian pulls a sheet over his crotch.

“I’m- I’m so sorry,” Cullen chokes, clipboard still held up like it can save him from this entire experience. “I didn’t mean to intrude- oh, Maker.”

“What’s the urgent… thing,” Leto asks, scrubbing sleep from his eyes.

Cullen shakes his head. “Oh, nevermind.”

“But you said it was urgent-”

“There’s nothing! Nothing urgent, I simply- wished to inform you that all your meetings are cancelled! And that you can stay in bed the whole day. If that is what you wish to do with your free time. That’s all I wanted to inform you of-”

Cullen fumbles his way to the staircase as best he can without looking at anything other than his clipboard. Dorian could swear there’s a hint of a smile on Cullen’s face as he says, “Uh. Good day to you both,” and retreats down the stairs.

Dorian is grinning as he watches him go.

Leto yawns, says, “You know, they had a bet out on us.”

“A bet? Who did?”

Something in Leto’s back pops as he stretches. “The entirety of Skyhold, apparently. Sera will be angry, she owes Blackwall 5 sovereigns now.”

“I’m sure she’ll slap me in my head for it,” Dorian says.

“Probably,” Leto agrees. He lies down again, using Dorian’s chest as a pillow. “Hey, Dorian.”

“Hmm?” Dorian is distracted by his hand moving through Leto’s hair, and the knowledge that he’s allowed to do so.

Leto nudges him in the nipple with his chin. “Got any more stuff to teach me?”

“Stuff?”

“Sex stuff,” Leto clarifies. He rolls over so he can look up at Dorian without craning his head. “I’ve decided what I’m doing with my free day.”

“Ah,” Dorian says.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

They have to stop ten minutes after Cullen leaves when a messenger comes bearing a tray of strawberries, toast and jam.

“Josephine sends her congratulations,” the messenger tells them.

“Which means she won money,” Leto says. He turns to the messenger. “How much did you get? Or lose?”

The messenger’s lips twitch. She folds her arms behind her back. “You two got me twenty sovereigns, my lord.”

“Always happy to be of assistance,” Dorian says, dipping a strawberry in jam before popping it into his mouth.

The messenger leaves, and they start in on eating their tray of food. They trade sticky, jam-laden kisses when they pause to talk.

Dorian looks out the window. The curtains are open, but there’s no one up so high to see them. Sun streams in, bathing the bed in warm light, and next to him he can hear Leto chewing his toast, can feel his bare leg and hip pressing against Dorian’s.

Dorian closes his eyes to keep the moment close. When he opens them, Leto is smiling over at him like there’s no place he’d be in the world, either.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want more of this 'verse, I have a tag for [Leto on my tumblr](http://theappleppielifestyle.tumblr.com/tagged/leto-trevelyan). God, I love the dork.
> 
> All Elven, Qunlat, Nevarran and Orlesian is entirely made up.
> 
> here's my [tumblr](http://theappleppielifestyle.tumblr.com/).
> 
> you can also support me at my [patreon!](https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2323104&ty=h/)


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